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-qt4-dir=<path-to-your-qt4-installation>
18 (for example, "--with-qt4-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:
42 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
43 files and proceed as stated above/below.
45 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
51 First of all, you will also need a recent C++ compiler, where recent
52 means that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming (gcc 4.x).
54 LyX makes great use of C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
55 This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
56 library to be able to compile this version of LyX.
58 For full LyX usability we suggest to use at least Qt 4.8 which has been
59 widely tested. For compilation you need to compile against at least
60 Qt 4.5.0. The only special point to make is that you must ensure that both
61 LyX and the 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 files in src/ (for example by applying a
71 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
72 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
74 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
76 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
78 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
79 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
80 that users can run these tests manually with Tools>Reconfigure.
82 o Python 2.4 or newer must be installed. Python is used for many
83 simple tasks that are executed by external scripts, such as the
84 automatic configuration step and the import of older LyX documents
85 with the lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when
86 opening a file). Python 3.0 or later is not supported.
92 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
93 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
94 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
95 to create the Makefile by typing
99 For more complicated cases, LyX configure honors the following specific
102 o --enable-build-type=[rel(ease), pre(release), dev(elopment), prof(iling), gprof]
103 allows to tweak the compiled code. The following table describes
104 the settings in terms of various options that are described later
106 release prerelease development profiling gprof
107 optimization -O2 -O2 -O -O2 -O2
115 The default 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 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
121 find extra libraries (qt4) it needs. Defaults to NONE
122 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
123 directories, separated by colons.
125 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
126 extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
127 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
129 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
130 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
131 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
133 o --with-version-suffix[=SUFFIX] will install LyX as lyxSUFFIX. The
134 LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyxSUFFIX/.
135 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
136 $HOME/.lyxSUFFIX. The default for SUFFIX is "-<currentversion>",
139 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
140 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
141 own, by doing something like :
142 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestdev
144 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
145 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
146 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
147 (or --prefix) instead.
149 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
152 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
153 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
155 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
156 library, although you might have another one installed.
158 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
159 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
162 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
163 language in case you do not want to install all the translation
164 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
165 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
166 export LINGUAS='de fi'
167 before running configure.
169 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
171 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
172 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
174 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
175 files (documentation, templates and layout definitions)
177 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
179 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
180 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
182 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
183 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
185 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
186 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
187 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
190 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
191 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
192 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
194 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
195 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
197 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
198 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
200 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
201 give a value to the CXX variable.
203 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
206 The following options allow to tweak more precisely the generated code:
208 o --enable-gprof instruments the code for use with the gprof
209 profiler. The result are only meaningful in conjunction with
210 --enable-build-type=release.
212 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
213 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
215 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
216 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
217 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
219 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
220 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
221 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
222 for development versions and prereleases only.
224 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
225 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
226 this flag is on for development versions only.
228 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
229 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
230 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
231 development versions only.
233 o --enable-stdlib-debug adds some debug code in the standard
234 library; this slows down the code, but has been helpful in the
235 past to find bugs. By default, this flag is on for development
238 o --enable-concept-checks adds some compile-time checks. There is no
239 run-time penalty. By default, this flag is on for development
242 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
243 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
244 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
245 flag, please report it as a bug.
247 o --with-frontend=FRONTEND that allows to specify which frontend you
248 want to use. The default value is qt4, which is the only available
251 o --enable-monolithic-build[=boost,client,insets,mathed,core,tex2lyx,frontend-qt4]
252 that enables monolithic build of the given parts of the source
253 code. This should reduce the compilation time provided you have
254 enough memory (>500MB).
257 Compiling and installing LyX
258 ----------------------------
260 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
267 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
268 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
269 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
273 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.png",
274 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
276 If configure fails for some strange reason
277 ------------------------------------------
279 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
280 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
282 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
283 ------------------------------------
285 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
286 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
287 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
288 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
289 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
290 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
291 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
293 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
294 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
295 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
296 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
302 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
303 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
304 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
307 o On SUN Sparc Solaris, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
308 work with Solaris make.
310 The Solaris 8 ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
311 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
312 There is no problem with the Solaris 9 and 10 ar.
314 Qt4 uses the Xrender X11 extension for antialiased fonts. This
315 extension was added to Xsun starting from the Solaris 10 8/07
316 release, but it is not activated by default. To activate it, you
317 must issue (as root) the following command:
318 svccfg -s svc:/application/x11/x11-server setprop options/server_args=+xrender
319 and then restart the X server.
321 There is a problem with the fontconfig library shipped with
322 Solaris 10 8/07 causing a seg-fault when it is used by Qt4.
323 Until this is fixed, a workaround is replacing the shared library
324 /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 with a copy from a previous release or
325 installing a new version of fontconfig from http://www.sunfreeware.com/
327 On Solaris, the default fontconfig configuration gives preference
328 to bitmap fonts at (not so small) sizes. As bitmapped fonts are not
329 antialiased, you may prefer changing this configuration. This may be
330 done by adding the following stanza
332 <match target="pattern">
333 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">
338 to either ~/.fonts.conf (for a per-user change) or /etc/fonts/local.conf
339 (for a global system change). The stanza should be added between the
340 <fontconfig> and </fontconfig> tags. If neither ~/.fonts.conf nor
341 /etc/fonts/local.conf exist, you can create them with the following
344 <?xml version="1.0"?>
345 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
347 <match target="pattern">
348 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">