1 Compiling and installing LyX
2 ============================
4 Quick compilation guide
5 -----------------------
7 These four steps will compile, test and install LyX:
10 configures LyX to your system.
16 runs the program so you can check it out.
19 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
20 if you want a smaller binary.
23 Note for CVS checkouts
24 ----------------------
26 If you have checked this out from CVS, you need to have
27 automake, autoconf, and gettext installed. Then,
28 type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
29 files and proceed as stated below.
31 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
36 First of all, you will also need a recent C++ compiler, where recent
37 means that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming.
38 Compilers that are known to compile LyX are egcs 1.1.x, gcc 2.95.x and
39 later, and Digital C++ version 6.1 and later. Please tell us your
40 experience with other compilers. It is _not_ possible to compile LyX
41 with gcc 2.7.x and 2.8.x, and this is not likely to change in the
44 Note that, contrary to LyX 1.0.x, LyX 1.2.x makes great use of C++
45 Standard Template Library (STL); this means that gcc users will have
46 to install the relevant libstdc++ library to be able to compile this
49 Both an Xforms and Xpm libraries should be installed to compile LyX.
50 It is imperative that you have the correct versions of these
51 libraries, and their associated header files.
53 As of LyX version 1.2.0, you will need to have Xforms library and
54 header version 0.88 or 0.89. Version 0.89.6 is the one which works
55 best, but the old stable 0.88.1 version is still supported. On some
56 systems, such as linux ELF, there are shared library versions of the
57 Xforms library, which require an installation step to configure the
60 Xforms is available (free) only in binary format, source code is not
61 available. If it is not available for your machine, contact the Xforms
62 developers to request a version for your system. You can get it from
64 http://world.std.com/~xforms/
65 ftp://ncmir.ucsd.edu/pub/xforms/
66 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/xforms/
67 ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/unix/X11/gui/xforms
68 ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/XFORMS/
70 If you use a rpm-based linux distribution, such as RedHat or Mandrake,
71 we recommend that you grab a version of xforms from
72 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib
73 as the rpm packages commonly found are compiled against glibc 2.0
74 instead of 2.[12], and this causes occasional crashes.
76 In addition, you must have libXpm version 4.7 or newer.
78 Note that the Qt and Gnome frontends are still under development, and
79 as a result are only useful if you want to help out with testing and
82 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
83 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
84 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can find the latest version
87 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/gettext-0.11.4.tar.gz
89 LyX contains a hack to work around this, but you should not rely too
92 To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
95 http://aiken.clan11.com/aiksaurus/
97 Finally, the two following programs should be available at
100 o Perl (at least 5.002) is needed for the reLyX script. reLyX will
101 not be installed if perl is not found. If the environment
102 variable PERL is set to point to some program, this value will be
103 used, even if the program does no exist (this can be useful if
104 the machine on which LyX is built is not the one where it will
107 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
108 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
109 that users can run these tests manually with Edit>Reconfigure.
112 Creating the Makefile
113 ---------------------
115 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
116 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
117 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
118 to create the Makefile by typing
122 For more complicated cases, LyX configure takes the following specific
125 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will find
126 extra libraries (Xpm, xforms) it needs. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search
127 in standard places). You can specify several directories, separated
130 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
131 xforms headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
132 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
134 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
135 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
136 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
138 o --with-version-suffix will install LyX as lyx-<version>, e.g. lyx-1.2.0
139 The LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyx-1.2.0/.
140 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
143 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX on
144 the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your own,
145 by doing something like : ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestcvs
147 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,--program-suffix
148 and the others will not affect the shared LyX directory etc. so it
149 is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix (or --prefix) instead.
151 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
152 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
154 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
155 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
156 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
158 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
159 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
160 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
161 for development versions and prereleases only.
163 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
166 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
167 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
169 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
170 library, although you might have another one installed.
172 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
173 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
176 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
177 language in case ou do not want to install all the translation
178 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
179 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
180 export LINGUAS='de fi'
181 before running configure.
183 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
185 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
186 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
188 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
189 files (lyxrc example, documentation, templates and layouts
190 definitions) will be installed.
191 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
193 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
194 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
196 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
197 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
199 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
200 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
201 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
203 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
204 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
206 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
207 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
209 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
210 give a value to the CXX variable.
212 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
215 In particular, the following options could be useful in some desperate
218 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
219 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
220 this flag is on for development versions only.
222 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
223 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
224 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
225 development versions only.
227 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
228 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
229 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
230 flag, please report it as a bug.
233 Compiling and installing LyX
234 ----------------------------
236 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
243 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
244 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
245 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
249 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.xpm",
250 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
252 If configure fails for some strange reason
253 ------------------------------------------
255 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
256 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
258 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
259 ------------------------------------
261 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
262 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
263 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
264 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
265 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
266 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
267 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
269 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
270 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
271 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
272 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
275 Preparing a binary distribution for the use of others
276 ------------------------------------------------------
278 o Compile LyX with the right compiler switches for your
279 architecture. Make sure you use the --without-latex-config switch
280 of configure, since others might not be interested by your
283 o Create a file README.bin describing your distribution and
284 referring to *you* if problems arise. As a model, you can use the
285 file development/tools/README.bin.example, which can be a good
288 o Type `make bindist'. This will create a file
289 lyx-1.xx.yy-bin.tar.gz. Rename it to reflect you architecture
290 and the peculiarities of your build (e.g. static vs. dynamic).
292 o Check that everything is correct by unpacking the distribution
293 in some private place and running it. In particular, check the
294 output of `ldd lyx' to know which libraries are really needed.
296 o Upload your binary file to ftp.devel.lyx.org:/pub/incoming, and
297 notify larsbj@lyx.org.
303 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
304 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
305 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
308 o If you have problems indicating that configure cannot find a part of
309 the xforms or Xpm library, use the --with-extra-lib and --with-extra-inc
310 options of configure to specify where these libraries reside.
312 o Configure will seemingly fail to find xpm.h and forms.h on linux
313 if the kernel headers are not available. Two cases are possible:
315 - you have not installed the kernel sources. Then you should
316 install them or at least the kernel-headers package (or
317 whatever it is called in your distribution).
319 - you have the sources, but you did a 'make mrproper' in the
320 kernel directory (this this removes some symbolic links that
321 are needed for compilation). A 'make symlinks' in linux kernel
324 o if you are using RedHat Linux 7.x, you must make sure you have the
325 latest updated gcc and related packages installed (at least -85),
326 or LyX will not compile or will be mis-compiled.
328 o if you get an error message when compiling LyX that looks like this :
330 ../../src/minibuffer.h:17: using directive `Object' introduced
331 ambiguous type `_ObjectRec *'
333 then you need to upgrade the version of the xforms library you have
336 o On solaris 2.6, you may have to compile with --with-included-string
337 if compiling with gcc 2.95.2.
339 o LyX can be compiled on Tru64 Unix with either GNU's gcc or the default
342 There are no Alpha-specific problems with gcc.
344 The following notes all refer to compilation with the Compaq cxx compiler.
346 LyX cannot be compiled on Tru64 Unix 4.0d or 4.0e with the default cxx
347 compiler. You should upgrade to at least cxx V6.2, to be found at
348 ftp::/ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/C-CXX/tru64/cxx/CXX622V40.tar. Users
349 running Tru64 Unix 4.0f and greater should have no real problems compiling
352 cxx V6.2 will compile LyX out of the box.
353 cxx V6.3-020 is also known to work, although there is a bug in
354 /usr/include/cxx/deque that will break compilation in FormPreferences.C.
355 Compaq are investigating, but a patch that works /now/ is:
357 --- /usr/include/cxx/deque_safe Mon Mar 4 21:09:50 2002
358 +++ /usr/include/cxx/deque Mon Mar 4 21:09:00 2002
361 if (size() >= x.size())
362 erase(copy(x.begin(), x.end(), begin()), end());
364 - copy(x.begin() + size(), x.end(),
365 - inserter(*this,copy(x.begin(),x.begin()+size(),begin())));
367 + const_iterator mid = x.begin() + difference_type(size());
368 + copy(x.begin(), mid, begin());
369 + insert(end(), mid, x.end());
375 At the time of writing, cxx V6.5-026 is the latest cxx compiler. It is
376 /not/ recommended. The compiler itself appears to be both buggy and
377 extremely bloated (trebling the size of the stripped LyX binary).
379 In order to compile LyX with the cxx compiler, you should run configure
380 with the following flags:
381 CXX='cxx -std strict_ansi'
382 CXXFLAGS='-nopure_cname -nocleanup -ptr /tmp/lyx_cxx_repository -O2'
384 The -nopure_cname flag is needed for compilers V6.3 and above because
385 LyX makes use of functions like popen, pclose that are defined in the
386 c version of <stdio.h> but are not formally part of any c/c++ standard.
387 They are not, therefore, included in the <cstdio> header file.