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.
13 configures LyX according to your system.
15 --with-qt4-dir=<path-to-your-qt4-installation>
16 if the environment variable QTDIR is not set (for example,
17 '--with-qt4-dir=/usr/share/qt4/'). Alternatively, you could
18 install pkgconfig (the name might vary depending on your
20 See Note below if ./configure script is not present.
26 runs the program so you can check it out.
29 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
30 if you want a smaller binary.
33 Note for Subversion (SVN) checkouts
34 -----------------------------
36 If you have checked this out from Subversion, you need to have:
40 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
41 files and proceed as stated below.
43 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
49 First of all, you will also need a recent C++ compiler, where recent
50 means that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming (gcc 4.x).
52 LyX makes great use of C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
53 This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
54 library to be able to compile this version of LyX.
56 For full LyX usability we suggest to use at least Qt 4.6 which has been
57 widely tested. For compilation you need to compile against at least
58 Qt 4.2.2. The only special point to make is that you must ensure that both
59 LyX and the Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
61 To build LyX with spell checking capabilities included you have to
62 install at least one of the development packages of the spell checker
63 libraries. See the RELEASE-NOTES for details.
66 * Other things to note
68 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
69 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
70 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
72 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
74 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
76 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
77 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
78 that users can run these tests manually with Tools>Reconfigure.
80 o Python 2.3 or newer installed to be able to import older LyX files
81 with the lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when
82 opening a file). Python 3.0 or later is not supported.
88 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
89 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
90 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
91 to create the Makefile by typing
95 For more complicated cases, LyX configure honors the following specific
98 o --enable-build-type=[rel(ease), pre(release), dev(elopment), prof(iling), gprof]
99 allows to tweak the compiled code. The following table describes
100 the settings in terms of various options that are described later
102 release prerelease development profiling gprof
103 optimization -O2 -O2 -O -O2 -O2
111 The default are as follows in terms of version number
112 release: stable release (1.x.y)
113 prerelease: version number contains alpha, beta, rc or pre.
114 development: version number contains svn.
116 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
117 find extra libraries (qt4) it needs. Defaults to NONE
118 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
119 directories, separated by colons.
121 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
122 extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
123 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
125 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
126 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
127 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
129 o --with-version-suffix[=SUFFIX] will install LyX as lyxSUFFIX. The
130 LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyxSUFFIX/.
131 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
132 $HOME/.lyxSUFFIX. The default for SUFFIX is "-<currentversion>",
135 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
136 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
137 own, by doing something like :
138 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestsvn
140 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
141 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
142 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
143 (or --prefix) instead.
145 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
148 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
149 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
151 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
152 library, although you might have another one installed.
154 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
155 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
158 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
159 language in case you do not want to install all the translation
160 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
161 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
162 export LINGUAS='de fi'
163 before running configure.
165 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
167 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
168 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
170 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
171 files (documentation, templates and layout definitions)
173 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
175 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
176 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
178 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
179 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
181 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
182 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
183 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
186 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
187 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
188 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
190 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
191 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
193 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
194 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
196 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
197 give a value to the CXX variable.
199 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
202 The following options allow to tweak more precisely the generated code:
204 o --enable-gprof instruments the code for use with the gprof
205 profiler. The result are only meaningful in conjunction with
206 --enable-build-type=release.
208 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
209 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
211 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
212 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
213 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
215 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
216 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
217 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
218 for development versions and prereleases only.
220 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
221 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
222 this flag is on for development versions only.
224 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
225 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
226 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
227 development versions only.
229 o --enable-stdlib-debug adds some debug code in the standard
230 library; this slows down the code, but has been helpful in the
231 past to find bugs. By default, this flag is on for development
234 o --enable-concept-checks adds some compile-time checks. There is no
235 run-time penalty. By default, this flag is on for development
238 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
239 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
240 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
241 flag, please report it as a bug.
243 o --with-frontend=FRONTEND that allows to specify which frontend you
244 want to use. The default value is qt4, which is the only available
247 o --enable-monolithic-build[=boost,client,insets,mathed,core,tex2lyx,frontend-qt4]
248 that enables monolithic build of the given parts of the source
249 code. This should reduce the compilation time provided you have
250 enough memory (>500MB).
253 Compiling and installing LyX
254 ----------------------------
256 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
263 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
264 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
265 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
269 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.png",
270 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
272 If configure fails for some strange reason
273 ------------------------------------------
275 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
276 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
278 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
279 ------------------------------------
281 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
282 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
283 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
284 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
285 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
286 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
287 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
289 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
290 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
291 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
292 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
298 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
299 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
300 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
303 o On SUN Sparc Solaris, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
304 work with Solaris make.
306 The Solaris 8 ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
307 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
308 There is no problem with the Solaris 9 and 10 ar.
310 Qt4 uses the Xrender X11 extension for antialiased fonts. This
311 extension was added to Xsun starting from the Solaris 10 8/07
312 release, but it is not activated by default. To activate it, you
313 must issue (as root) the following command:
314 svccfg -s svc:/application/x11/x11-server setprop options/server_args=+xrender
315 and then restart the X server.
317 There is a problem with the fontconfig library shipped with
318 Solaris 10 8/07 causing a seg-fault when it is used by Qt4.
319 Until this is fixed, a workaround is replacing the shared library
320 /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 with a copy from a previous release or
321 installing a new version of fontconfig from http://www.sunfreeware.com/
323 On Solaris, the default fontconfig configuration gives preference
324 to bitmap fonts at (not so small) sizes. As bitmapped fonts are not
325 antialiased, you may prefer changing this configuration. This may be
326 done by adding the following stanza
328 <match target="pattern">
329 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">
334 to either ~/.fonts.conf (for a per-user change) or /etc/fonts/local.conf
335 (for a global system change). The stanza should be added between the
336 <fontconfig> and </fontconfig> tags. If neither ~/.fonts.conf nor
337 /etc/fonts/local.conf exist, you can create them with the following
340 <?xml version="1.0"?>
341 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
343 <match target="pattern">
344 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">