1 Compiling and installing LyX with autotools
2 ===========================================
4 This document is about compiling LyX with the autotools suite. If you
5 want to compile using using CMake (in particular on windows), please
6 refer to the INSTALL.cmake file.
9 Quick compilation guide
10 -----------------------
12 These four steps will compile, test and install LyX:
14 0) Linux users beware: You need qt5 and qt5-devel packages
15 of the same version to compile LyX.
17 In general, it is also recommended to have pkg-config
18 installed (the name might vary depending on your
21 1) ./configure configures LyX according to your system. You
22 may have to set --with-qt-dir=<path-to-your-qt-installation>
23 (for example, "--with-qt-dir=/usr/share/qt5/") if the
24 environment variable QTDIR is not set and pkg-config is not
27 See Note below if ./configure script is not present.
33 runs the program so you can check it out.
36 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
37 if you want a smaller binary.
40 Note for Git checkouts
41 -----------------------------
43 If you have checked this out from Git, you need to have:
44 * automake (supported versions are 1.14--1.16)
45 * autoconf (supported versions are 2.65--2.69)
46 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
47 files and proceed as stated above/below.
49 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
55 First of all, you will need a C++11 standard conforming compiler, like g++ (at
56 least 4.9, to have proper srd::regex) or clang++.
58 LyX makes great use of the C++ Standard Library. This means that gcc
59 users will have to install the relevant libstdc++ library to be able
60 to compile this version of LyX.
62 For full LyX usability we suggest to use Qt 5.6 and higher, or at the
63 very least Qt 5.4. It is also possible to compile against Qt 6. The
64 only special point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX and
65 the Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
67 To build LyX with spell checking capabilities included you have to
68 install at least one of the development packages of the spell checker
69 libraries. See the RELEASE-NOTES for details.
71 Users of debian-based distributions are well advised to run
72 'apt-get build-dep lyx' before compiling to install proper dependencies.
74 Python 3.8 (or newer) must be installed. Python is used for many simple
75 tasks that are executed by external scripts, such as the automatic
76 configuration step and the import of older LyX documents with the
77 lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when opening a file).
79 * Other things to note
81 If you make modifications to the source that affect any of the
82 translations or you change the translation files themselves (po/*.po)
83 files, you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed to
84 compile LyX with up-to-date translations (at least gettext version
85 0.16.1 is needed). You can get the latest version from:
86 https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
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 -Og -O2 -O2
115 The defaults are as follows in terms of version number:
116 release: stable release (2.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 --enable-qt6 that checks configuration with Qt 6.x, and then Qt
125 5.x. By default, only Qt5 is tried.
127 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
128 find extra libraries (like Qt) it needs. Defaults to NONE
129 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
130 directories, separated by colons.
132 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
133 extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
134 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
136 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
137 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
138 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
140 o --with-version-suffix[=SUFFIX] will install LyX as lyxSUFFIX. The
141 LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyxSUFFIX/.
142 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
143 $HOME/.lyxSUFFIX. The default for SUFFIX is "-<currentversion>",
146 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
147 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
148 own, by doing something like :
149 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestdev
151 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
152 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
153 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
154 (or --prefix) instead.
156 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
159 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
160 yielding somewhat smaller code.
162 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
163 languages 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 using 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 a specific compiler, you can
201 give a value to the CXX variable.
203 The following options allow you to tweak the generated code more
204 precisely (see the description of --enable-build-type for the default
207 o --enable-cxx-mode=VALUE can be used to select a C++ standard, for
208 example --enable-cxx-mode=11. The default is to try C++17, C++14, and
209 C++11, in this order.
211 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
212 higher level than the default, for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
213 Default is -Og when debugging is enabled, -O2 otherwise.
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 be slower.
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
221 to debug problems in LyX. There is no run-time penalty.
223 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
224 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings.
226 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
227 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
228 is --disable-assertions.
230 o --enable-stdlib-assertions adds some bound checking code in the
231 libstdc++ standard library; this slows down the code, but has been
232 helpful in the past to find bugs. This has no effect when using
233 llvm's libc++ library.
235 o --enable-stdlib-debug encompasses stdlib-assertions and adds
236 additional checks in libstdc++. Note that this changes the ABI and
237 is in general incompatible with the system hunspell library (as of
238 version 1.5). You may have to use --disable-stdlib-debug when
239 linking development versions against your system's hunspell
240 library. This has no effect when using llvm's libc++ library.
244 Compiling and installing LyX
245 ----------------------------
247 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
254 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
255 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
256 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
260 BTW: in the lib/images subdirectory there is also small icons
261 `lyx.png' and `lyx.svg', that can be used to display LyX documents in
264 If configure fails for some strange reason
265 ------------------------------------------
267 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You can always check
268 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
270 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
271 ------------------------------------
273 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
274 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
275 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
276 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
277 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
278 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
279 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
281 If you have to use a `make' that does not support the `VPATH'
282 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
283 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
284 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another