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: if compiling the Qt frontend, you need
10 qt and qt-devel packages of the same version to compile LyX.
13 configures LyX to your system. By default, LyX configures
14 the xforms frontend, use --with-frontend=qt to build a Qt
15 version. You may have to set
16 --with-qt-dir=<path-to-your-qt-installation> to succeed.
22 runs the program so you can check it out.
25 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
26 if you want a smaller binary.
29 Note for CVS checkouts
30 ----------------------
32 If you have checked this out from CVS, you need to have
33 automake, autoconf, and gettext installed. Then,
34 type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
35 files and proceed as stated below.
37 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
42 First of all, you will also need a recent C++ compiler, where recent
43 means that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming.
44 Compilers that are known to compile LyX are egcs 1.1.x, gcc 2.95.x and
45 later, and Digital C++ version 6.1 and later. Please tell us your
46 experience with other compilers. It is _not_ possible to compile LyX
47 with gcc 2.7.x and 2.8.x, and this is not likely to change in the
50 Note that, contrary to LyX 1.0.x, LyX 1.3.x makes great use of C++
51 Standard Template Library (STL); this means that gcc users will have
52 to install the relevant libstdc++ library to be able to compile this
57 Both an Xforms and Xpm libraries should be installed to compile LyX.
58 It is imperative that you have the correct versions of these
59 libraries, and their associated header files.
61 The xforms library has been very recently updated to version 1.0.
62 This version has been released under the LGPL (Lesser General Public
63 License), and the availability of the source means that many bugs that
64 have been plaguing LyX have been fixed in xforms. You are advised to
65 upgrade to xforms 1.0 to enjoy all these new fixes.
66 In fact, LyX 1.3.x no longer supports versions of xforms older than 0.89.5.
68 You can get the source from
69 http://world.std.com/~xforms/
70 ftp://ncmir.ucsd.edu/pub/xforms/OpenSource/xforms-1.0-release.tgz
71 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/xforms/OpenSource/xforms-1.0-release.tgz
73 If you use a rpm-based linux distribution, such as RedHat or Mandrake,
74 we recommend that you grab a version of xforms from
75 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib
76 Look for the xforms-1.0-release.src.rpm or the binary libforms*.i386.rpm.
78 In addition, you must have libXpm version 4.7 or newer.
82 LyX has been tested with both Qt 2.x and 3.x libraries. The only special
83 point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX and the Qt libraries
84 are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
86 Note that if Qt is using Xft2/fontconfig, you may need to install the
87 latex-xft-fonts package (at ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib/) to get
88 maths symbols displayed properly. To find out, type:
90 ldd `which lyx` | grep fontconfig
92 at the console. Both RH8 and Debian unstable distributions are known
95 If, however, your version of Qt does not use fontconfig, then the
96 /usr/local/share/lyx/xfonts directory (or equivalent) should be added to
97 the font path. This is done automatically by LyX if LyX is run on
98 the local machine, and the X server supports Postscript fonts. If, however,
99 you're running LyX remotely, then you'll have to do this step yourself.
100 'man xset' is your friend.
102 * Other things to note
104 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
105 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
106 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
108 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/gettext-0.11.4.tar.gz
110 LyX contains a hack to work around this, but you should not rely too
113 To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
115 http://aiksaurus.sourceforge.net/
117 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
119 o Perl (at least 5.002) is needed for the reLyX script. reLyX will
120 not be installed if perl is not found. If the environment
121 variable PERL is set to point to some program, this value will be
122 used, even if the program does no exist (this can be useful if
123 the machine on which LyX is built is not the one where it will
126 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
127 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
128 that users can run these tests manually with Edit>Reconfigure.
130 Finally, you will need to have python 1.5.2 or newer installed to be
131 able to import older LyX files with the lyx2lyx script (this script is
132 called automatically when opening a file).
135 Creating the Makefile
136 ---------------------
138 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
139 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
140 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
141 to create the Makefile by typing
145 For more complicated cases, LyX configure takes the following specific
148 o --with-frontend=FRONTEND that allows to specify which frontend you
149 want to use. Default is "xforms", and the other possible value is
152 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
153 find extra libraries (Xpm, xforms, qt) it needs. Defaults to NONE
154 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
155 directories, separated by colons.
157 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
158 xforms headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
159 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
161 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
162 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
163 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
165 o --with-version-suffix will install LyX as lyx-<version>, e.g. lyx-1.3.1
166 The LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyx-1.3.1/.
167 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
170 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
171 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
172 own, by doing something like :
173 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestcvs
175 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
176 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
177 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
178 (or --prefix) instead.
180 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
181 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
183 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
184 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
185 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
187 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
188 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
189 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
190 for development versions and prereleases only.
192 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
195 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
196 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
198 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
199 library, although you might have another one installed.
201 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
202 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
205 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
206 language in case you do not want to install all the translation
207 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
208 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
209 export LINGUAS='de fi'
210 before running configure.
212 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
214 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
215 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
217 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
218 files (lyxrc example, documentation, templates and layouts
219 definitions) will be installed.
220 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
222 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
223 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
225 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
226 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
228 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
229 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
230 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
233 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
234 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
235 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
237 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
238 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
240 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
241 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
243 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
244 give a value to the CXX variable.
246 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
249 In particular, the following options could be useful in some desperate
252 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
253 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
254 this flag is on for development versions only.
256 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
257 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
258 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
259 development versions only.
261 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
262 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
263 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
264 flag, please report it as a bug.
267 Compiling and installing LyX
268 ----------------------------
270 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
277 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
278 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
279 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
283 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.xpm",
284 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
286 If configure fails for some strange reason
287 ------------------------------------------
289 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
290 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
292 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
293 ------------------------------------
295 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
296 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
297 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
298 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
299 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
300 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
301 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
303 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
304 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
305 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
306 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
309 Preparing a binary distribution for the use of others
310 ------------------------------------------------------
312 o Compile LyX with the right compiler switches for your
313 architecture. Make sure you use the --without-latex-config switch
314 of configure, since others might not be interested by your
317 o Create a file README.bin describing your distribution and
318 referring to *you* if problems arise. As a model, you can use the
319 file development/tools/README.bin.example, which can be a good
322 o Type `make bindist'. This will create a file
323 lyx-1.xx.yy-bin.tar.gz. Rename it to reflect you architecture
324 and the peculiarities of your build (e.g. static vs. dynamic).
326 o Check that everything is correct by unpacking the distribution
327 in some private place and running it. In particular, check the
328 output of `ldd lyx' to know which libraries are really needed.
330 o Upload your binary file to ftp.devel.lyx.org:/pub/incoming, and
331 notify larsbj@lyx.org.
337 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
338 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
339 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
342 o If you have problems indicating that configure cannot find a part of
343 the xforms or Xpm library, use the --with-extra-lib and --with-extra-inc
344 options of configure to specify where these libraries reside.
346 o Configure will seemingly fail to find xpm.h and forms.h on linux
347 if the kernel headers are not available. Two cases are possible:
349 - you have not installed the kernel sources. Then you should
350 install them or at least the kernel-headers package (or
351 whatever it is called in your distribution).
353 - you have the sources, but you did a 'make mrproper' in the
354 kernel directory (this this removes some symbolic links that
355 are needed for compilation). A 'make symlinks' in linux kernel
358 o if you are using RedHat Linux 7.x, you must make sure you have the
359 latest updated gcc and related packages installed (at least -85),
360 or LyX will not compile or will be mis-compiled.
362 o if you get an error message when compiling LyX that looks like this :
364 ../../src/minibuffer.h:17: using directive `Object' introduced
365 ambiguous type `_ObjectRec *'
367 then you need to upgrade the version of the xforms library you have
370 o On SUN Sparc Solaris 8, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
371 work with Solaris make.
373 The Solaris ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
374 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
376 o LyX can be compiled on Tru64 Unix with either GNU's gcc or the default
379 There are no Alpha-specific problems with gcc.
381 The following notes all refer to compilation with the Compaq cxx compiler.
383 LyX cannot be compiled on Tru64 Unix 4.0d or 4.0e with the default cxx
384 compiler. You should upgrade to at least cxx V6.2, to be found at
385 ftp::/ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/C-CXX/tru64/cxx/CXX622V40.tar. Users
386 running Tru64 Unix 4.0f and greater should have no real problems compiling
389 cxx V6.2 will compile LyX out of the box.
390 cxx V6.3-020 is also known to work, although there is a bug in
391 /usr/include/cxx/deque that will break compilation in FormPreferences.C.
392 Compaq are investigating, but a patch that works /now/ is:
394 --- /usr/include/cxx/deque_safe Mon Mar 4 21:09:50 2002
395 +++ /usr/include/cxx/deque Mon Mar 4 21:09:00 2002
398 if (size() >= x.size())
399 erase(copy(x.begin(), x.end(), begin()), end());
401 - copy(x.begin() + size(), x.end(),
402 - inserter(*this,copy(x.begin(),x.begin()+size(),begin())));
404 + const_iterator mid = x.begin() + difference_type(size());
405 + copy(x.begin(), mid, begin());
406 + insert(end(), mid, x.end());
412 At the time of writing, cxx V6.5-026 is the latest cxx compiler. It is
413 /not/ recommended. The compiler itself appears to be both buggy and
414 extremely bloated (trebling the size of the stripped LyX binary).
416 In order to compile LyX with the cxx compiler, you should run configure
417 with the following flags:
418 CXX='cxx -std strict_ansi'
419 CXXFLAGS='-nopure_cname -nocleanup -ptr /tmp/lyx_cxx_repository -O2'
421 The -nopure_cname flag is needed for compilers V6.3 and above because
422 LyX makes use of functions like popen, pclose that are defined in the
423 c version of <stdio.h> but are not formally part of any c/c++ standard.
424 They are not, therefore, included in the <cstdio> header file.