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
51 Both an Xforms and Xpm libraries should be installed to compile LyX.
52 It is imperative that you have the correct versions of these
53 libraries, and their associated header files.
55 The xforms library has been very recently updated to version 1.0.
56 This version has been released under the LGPL (Lesser General Public
57 License), and the availability of the source means that many bugs that
58 have been plaguing LyX have been fixed in xforms. You are advised to
59 upgrade to xforms 1.0 to enjoy all these new fixes.
60 In fact, LyX 1.3.0 no longer supports versions of xforms older than 0.89.5.
62 You can get the source from
63 http://world.std.com/~xforms/
64 ftp://ncmir.ucsd.edu/pub/xforms/OpenSource/xforms-1.0-release.tgz
65 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/xforms/OpenSource/xforms-1.0-release.tgz
67 If you use a rpm-based linux distribution, such as RedHat or Mandrake,
68 we recommend that you grab a version of xforms from
69 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib
70 Look for the xforms-1.0-release.src.rpm or the binary libforms*.i386.rpm.
72 In addition, you must have libXpm version 4.7 or newer.
76 LyX has been tested with both Qt 2.x and 3.x libraries. The only special
77 point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX and the Qt libraries
78 are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
80 Note that if Qt is using Xft2/fontconfig, you may need to install the
81 latex-ttf-fonts package, tobe found on ftp://ftp.lyx.org/ to get maths
82 symbols displayed properly. To find out, type:
83 ldd `which lyx` | grep fontconfig
84 at the console. Both RH8 and Debian unstable distributions are known
87 If, however, your version of Qt does not use fontconfig, then the
88 /usr/local/share/lyx/xfonts directory (or equivalent) should be added to
89 the font path. This is done automatically by LyX if LyX is run on
90 the local machine, and the X server supports Postscript fonts. If, however,
91 you're running LyX remotely, then you'll have to do this step yourself.
92 'man xset' is your friend.
94 * Other things to note
96 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
97 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
98 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
100 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/gettext-0.11.4.tar.gz
102 LyX contains a hack to work around this, but you should not rely too
105 To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
107 http://aiken.clan11.com/aiksaurus/
109 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
111 o Perl (at least 5.002) is needed for the reLyX script. reLyX will
112 not be installed if perl is not found. If the environment
113 variable PERL is set to point to some program, this value will be
114 used, even if the program does no exist (this can be useful if
115 the machine on which LyX is built is not the one where it will
118 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
119 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
120 that users can run these tests manually with Edit>Reconfigure.
122 Finally, you will need to have python 1.5.2 or newer installed to be
123 able to import older LyX files with the lyx2lyx script (this script is
124 called automatically when opening a file).
127 Creating the Makefile
128 ---------------------
130 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
131 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
132 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
133 to create the Makefile by typing
137 For more complicated cases, LyX configure takes the following specific
140 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will find
141 extra libraries (Xpm, xforms) it needs. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search
142 in standard places). You can specify several directories, separated
145 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
146 xforms headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
147 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
149 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
150 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
151 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
153 o --with-version-suffix will install LyX as lyx-<version>, e.g. lyx-1.2.0
154 The LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyx-1.2.0/.
155 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
158 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX on
159 the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your own,
160 by doing something like : ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestcvs
162 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,--program-suffix
163 and the others will not affect the shared LyX directory etc. so it
164 is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix (or --prefix) instead.
166 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
167 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
169 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
170 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
171 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
173 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
174 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
175 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
176 for development versions and prereleases only.
178 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
181 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
182 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
184 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
185 library, although you might have another one installed.
187 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
188 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
191 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
192 language in case ou do not want to install all the translation
193 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
194 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
195 export LINGUAS='de fi'
196 before running configure.
198 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
200 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
201 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
203 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
204 files (lyxrc example, documentation, templates and layouts
205 definitions) will be installed.
206 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
208 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
209 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
211 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
212 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
214 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
215 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
216 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
218 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
219 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
221 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
222 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
224 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
225 give a value to the CXX variable.
227 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
230 In particular, the following options could be useful in some desperate
233 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
234 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
235 this flag is on for development versions only.
237 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
238 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
239 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
240 development versions only.
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.
248 Compiling and installing LyX
249 ----------------------------
251 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
258 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
259 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
260 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
264 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.xpm",
265 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
267 If configure fails for some strange reason
268 ------------------------------------------
270 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
271 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
273 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
274 ------------------------------------
276 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
277 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
278 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
279 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
280 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
281 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
282 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
284 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
285 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
286 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
287 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
290 Preparing a binary distribution for the use of others
291 ------------------------------------------------------
293 o Compile LyX with the right compiler switches for your
294 architecture. Make sure you use the --without-latex-config switch
295 of configure, since others might not be interested by your
298 o Create a file README.bin describing your distribution and
299 referring to *you* if problems arise. As a model, you can use the
300 file development/tools/README.bin.example, which can be a good
303 o Type `make bindist'. This will create a file
304 lyx-1.xx.yy-bin.tar.gz. Rename it to reflect you architecture
305 and the peculiarities of your build (e.g. static vs. dynamic).
307 o Check that everything is correct by unpacking the distribution
308 in some private place and running it. In particular, check the
309 output of `ldd lyx' to know which libraries are really needed.
311 o Upload your binary file to ftp.devel.lyx.org:/pub/incoming, and
312 notify larsbj@lyx.org.
318 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
319 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
320 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
323 o If you have problems indicating that configure cannot find a part of
324 the xforms or Xpm library, use the --with-extra-lib and --with-extra-inc
325 options of configure to specify where these libraries reside.
327 o Configure will seemingly fail to find xpm.h and forms.h on linux
328 if the kernel headers are not available. Two cases are possible:
330 - you have not installed the kernel sources. Then you should
331 install them or at least the kernel-headers package (or
332 whatever it is called in your distribution).
334 - you have the sources, but you did a 'make mrproper' in the
335 kernel directory (this this removes some symbolic links that
336 are needed for compilation). A 'make symlinks' in linux kernel
339 o if you are using RedHat Linux 7.x, you must make sure you have the
340 latest updated gcc and related packages installed (at least -85),
341 or LyX will not compile or will be mis-compiled.
343 o if you get an error message when compiling LyX that looks like this :
345 ../../src/minibuffer.h:17: using directive `Object' introduced
346 ambiguous type `_ObjectRec *'
348 then you need to upgrade the version of the xforms library you have
351 o On solaris 2.6, you may have to compile with --with-included-string
352 if compiling with gcc 2.95.2.
354 o LyX can be compiled on Tru64 Unix with either GNU's gcc or the default
357 There are no Alpha-specific problems with gcc.
359 The following notes all refer to compilation with the Compaq cxx compiler.
361 LyX cannot be compiled on Tru64 Unix 4.0d or 4.0e with the default cxx
362 compiler. You should upgrade to at least cxx V6.2, to be found at
363 ftp::/ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/C-CXX/tru64/cxx/CXX622V40.tar. Users
364 running Tru64 Unix 4.0f and greater should have no real problems compiling
367 cxx V6.2 will compile LyX out of the box.
368 cxx V6.3-020 is also known to work, although there is a bug in
369 /usr/include/cxx/deque that will break compilation in FormPreferences.C.
370 Compaq are investigating, but a patch that works /now/ is:
372 --- /usr/include/cxx/deque_safe Mon Mar 4 21:09:50 2002
373 +++ /usr/include/cxx/deque Mon Mar 4 21:09:00 2002
376 if (size() >= x.size())
377 erase(copy(x.begin(), x.end(), begin()), end());
379 - copy(x.begin() + size(), x.end(),
380 - inserter(*this,copy(x.begin(),x.begin()+size(),begin())));
382 + const_iterator mid = x.begin() + difference_type(size());
383 + copy(x.begin(), mid, begin());
384 + insert(end(), mid, x.end());
390 At the time of writing, cxx V6.5-026 is the latest cxx compiler. It is
391 /not/ recommended. The compiler itself appears to be both buggy and
392 extremely bloated (trebling the size of the stripped LyX binary).
394 In order to compile LyX with the cxx compiler, you should run configure
395 with the following flags:
396 CXX='cxx -std strict_ansi'
397 CXXFLAGS='-nopure_cname -nocleanup -ptr /tmp/lyx_cxx_repository -O2'
399 The -nopure_cname flag is needed for compilers V6.3 and above because
400 LyX makes use of functions like popen, pclose that are defined in the
401 c version of <stdio.h> but are not formally part of any c/c++ standard.
402 They are not, therefore, included in the <cstdio> header file.