1 Compiling and installing LyX
2 ============================
4 Quick compilation guide
5 -----------------------
7 These four steps will compile, test and install LyX:
9 0) Linux users beware: You need qt4 and qt4-devel packages
10 of the same version to compile LyX.
12 In general, it is also recommended to have pkg-config
13 installed (the name might vary depending on your
16 1) ./configure configures LyX according to your system. You
17 may have to set --with-qt-dir=<path-to-your-qt-installation>
18 (for example, "--with-qt-dir=/usr/share/qt4/") if the
19 environment variable QTDIR is not set and pkg-config is not
22 See Note below if ./configure script is not present.
28 runs the program so you can check it out.
31 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
32 if you want a smaller binary.
35 Note for Git checkouts
36 -----------------------------
38 If you have checked this out from Git, you need to have:
39 * automake (supported versions are 1.8--1.14)
40 * autoconf (supported versions are 2.60--2.69)
41 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
42 files and proceed as stated above/below.
44 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
50 First of all, you will need a recent C++ compiler, where recent means
51 that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming (gcc 4.x).
53 LyX makes great use of the C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
54 This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
55 library to be able to compile this version of LyX.
57 For full LyX usability we suggest to use Qt 4.x and at least Qt 4.8 which
58 has been widely tested. For compilation you need to compile against at
59 least Qt 4.5.0 and at Windows we advise at highest Qt 4.8.4. The only
60 special point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX and the
61 Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
63 To build LyX with spell checking capabilities included you have to
64 install at least one of the development packages of the spell checker
65 libraries. See the RELEASE-NOTES for details.
68 * Other things to note
70 If you make modifications to the source that affect any of the
71 translations or you change the translation files themselves (po/*.po)
72 files, you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed to
73 compile LyX with up-to-date translations (at least gettext version
74 0.16.1 is needed). You can get the latest version from:
75 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
77 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
79 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
80 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
81 that users can run these tests manually with Tools>Reconfigure.
83 o Python 2.4 or newer must be installed. Python is used for many
84 simple tasks that are executed by external scripts, such as the
85 automatic configuration step and the import of older LyX documents
86 with the lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when
87 opening a file). Python 3.0 or later is not supported.
93 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
94 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
95 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
96 to create the Makefile by typing
100 For more complicated cases, LyX configure honors the following specific
103 o --enable-build-type=[rel(ease), pre(release), dev(elopment), prof(iling), gprof]
104 allows to tweak the compiled code. The following table describes
105 the settings in terms of various options that are described later
107 release prerelease development profiling gprof
108 optimization -O2 -O2 -O -O2 -O2
115 The defaults are as follows in terms of version number
116 release: stable release (1.x.y)
117 prerelease: version number contains alpha, beta, rc or pre.
118 development: version number contains dev.
120 The `profiling' build type uses the -fno-omit-frame-pointer option with gcc
122 The `gprof' build type compiles and links with -pg option with gcc.
124 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
125 find extra libraries (qt4) it needs. Defaults to NONE
126 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
127 directories, separated by colons.
129 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
130 extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
131 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
133 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
134 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
135 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
137 o --with-version-suffix[=SUFFIX] will install LyX as lyxSUFFIX. The
138 LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyxSUFFIX/.
139 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
140 $HOME/.lyxSUFFIX. The default for SUFFIX is "-<currentversion>",
143 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
144 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
145 own, by doing something like :
146 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestdev
148 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
149 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
150 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
151 (or --prefix) instead.
153 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
156 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
157 yielding somewhat smaller code.
159 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
160 languages in case you do not want to install all the translation
161 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
162 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
163 export LINGUAS='de fi'
164 before running configure.
166 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
168 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
169 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
171 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
172 files (documentation, templates and layout definitions)
174 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
176 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
177 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
179 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
180 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
182 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
183 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
184 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
187 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
188 comes to using relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
189 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
191 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
192 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
194 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
195 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
197 Similarly, if you want to force the use of a specific compiler, you can
198 give a value to the CXX variable.
200 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
203 The following options allow you to tweak the generated code more precisely (see the description of --enable-build-type for the default values):
205 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
206 higher level than the default, for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
208 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
209 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
210 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
212 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
213 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try
214 to debug problems in LyX. There is no run-time penalty.
216 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
217 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings.
219 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
220 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
221 is --disable-assertions.
223 o --enable-stdlib-debug adds some debug code in the standard
224 library; this slows down the code, but has been helpful in the
227 o --enable-concept-checks adds some compile-time checks. There is no
230 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
231 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
232 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
233 flag, please report it as a bug.
235 o --enable-monolithic-build[=boost,client,insets,mathed,core,tex2lyx,frontend-qt4]
236 that enables monolithic build of the given parts of the source
237 code. This should reduce the compilation time provided you have
238 enough memory (>500MB).
241 Compiling and installing LyX
242 ----------------------------
244 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
251 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
252 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
253 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
257 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.png",
258 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
260 If configure fails for some strange reason
261 ------------------------------------------
263 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You can always check
264 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
266 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
267 ------------------------------------
269 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
270 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
271 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
272 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
273 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
274 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
275 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
277 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
278 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
279 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
280 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
286 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
287 team members or users to help compiling on some particular
288 architectures. If you find that some of these hints are wrong, please
291 o On SUN Sparc Solaris, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
292 work with Solaris make.
294 The Solaris 8 ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
295 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
296 There is no problem with the Solaris 9 and 10 ar.
298 Qt4 uses the Xrender X11 extension for antialiased fonts. This
299 extension was added to Xsun starting from the Solaris 10 8/07
300 release, but it is not activated by default. To activate it, you
301 must issue (as root) the following command:
302 svccfg -s svc:/application/x11/x11-server setprop options/server_args=+xrender
303 and then restart the X server.
305 There is a problem with the fontconfig library shipped with
306 Solaris 10 8/07 causing a seg-fault when it is used by Qt4.
307 Until this is fixed, a workaround is replacing the shared library
308 /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 with a copy from a previous release or
309 installing a new version of fontconfig from http://www.sunfreeware.com/
311 On Solaris, the default fontconfig configuration gives preference
312 to bitmap fonts at (not so small) sizes. As bitmapped fonts are not
313 antialiased, you may prefer changing this configuration. This may be
314 done by adding the following stanza
316 <match target="pattern">
317 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">
322 to either ~/.fonts.conf (for a per-user change) or /etc/fonts/local.conf
323 (for a global system change). The stanza should be added between the
324 <fontconfig> and </fontconfig> tags. If neither ~/.fonts.conf nor
325 /etc/fonts/local.conf exists, you can create them with the following
328 <?xml version="1.0"?>
329 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
331 <match target="pattern">
332 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">