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
49 Both an Xforms and Xpm libraries should be installed to compile LyX.
50 It is imperative that you have the correct versions of these
51 libraries, and their associated header files.
53 As of LyX version 1.2.0, you will need to have Xforms library and
54 header version 0.88 or 0.89. Version 0.89.6 is the one which works
55 best, but the old stable 0.88.1 version is still supported. On some
56 systems, such as linux ELF, there are shared library versions of the
57 Xforms library, which require an installation step to configure the
60 Xforms is available (free) only in binary format, source code is not
61 available. If it is not available for your machine, contact the Xforms
62 developers to request a version for your system. You can get it from
64 http://world.std.com/~xforms/
65 ftp://ncmir.ucsd.edu/pub/xforms/
66 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/xforms/
67 ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/unix/X11/gui/xforms
68 ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/XFORMS/
70 If you use a rpm-based linux distribution, such as RedHat or Mandrake,
71 we recommend that you grab a version of xforms from
72 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib
73 as the rpm packages commonly found are compiled against glibc 2.0
74 instead of 2.[12], and this causes occasional crashes.
76 In addition, you must have libXpm version 4.7 or newer.
78 Note that the Qt and Gnome frontends are still under development, and
79 as a result are only useful if you want to help out with testing and
82 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
83 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
84 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can find the latest version
87 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext-0.10.xx.tar.gz.
89 LyX contains a hack to work around this, but you should not rely too
92 To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
95 http://aiken.clan11.com/aiksaurus/
97 Finally, the two following programs should be available at
100 o Perl (at least 5.002) is needed for the reLyX script. reLyX will
101 not be installed if perl is not found. If the environment
102 variable PERL is set to point to some program, this value will be
103 used, even if the program does no exist (this can be useful if
104 the machine on which LyX is built is not the one where it will
107 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
108 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
109 that users can run these tests manually with Edit>Reconfigure.
112 Creating the Makefile
113 ---------------------
115 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
116 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
117 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
118 to create the Makefile by typing
122 For more complicated cases, LyX configure takes the following specific
125 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will find
126 extra libraries (Xpm, xforms) it needs. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search
127 in standard places). You can specify several directories, separated
130 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
131 xforms headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
132 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
134 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
135 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
136 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
138 o --with-version-suffix will install LyX as lyx-<version>, e.g. lyx-1.2.0
139 The LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyx-1.2.0/.
140 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
143 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX on
144 the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your own,
145 by doing something like : ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestcvs
147 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,--program-suffix
148 and the others will not affect the shared LyX directory etc. so it
149 is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix (or --prefix) instead.
151 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
152 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
154 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
155 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
156 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
158 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
161 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
162 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
164 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
165 library, although you might have another one installed.
167 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
168 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
171 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
172 language in case ou do not want to install all the translation
173 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
174 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
175 export LINGUAS='de fi'
176 before running configure.
178 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
180 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
181 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
183 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
184 files (lyxrc example, documentation, templates and layouts
185 definitions) will be installed.
186 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
188 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
189 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
191 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
192 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
194 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
195 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
196 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
198 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
199 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
201 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
202 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
204 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
205 give a value to the CXX variable.
207 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
210 In particular, the following options could be useful in some
213 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
214 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
215 this flag is on for development versions only.
217 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
218 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
219 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
220 development versions only.
222 o --with-broken-headers that provides prototypes to replace functions
223 not correctly defined in SunOS4 and SCO header files. Its only effect is
224 to suppress a few warnings. It is autodetected by default.
226 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
227 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
228 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
229 flag, please report it as a bug.
231 o --without-liberty suppresses the detection of the -liberty library
232 (see the section `Problems').
235 Compiling and installing LyX
236 ----------------------------
238 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
245 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
246 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
247 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
251 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.xpm",
252 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
254 If configure fails for some strange reason
255 ------------------------------------------
257 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
258 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
260 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
261 ------------------------------------
263 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
264 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
265 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
266 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
267 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
268 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
269 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
271 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
272 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
273 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
274 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
277 Preparing a binary distribution for the use of others
278 ------------------------------------------------------
280 o Compile LyX with the right compiler switches for your
281 architecture. Make sure you use the --without-latex-config switch
282 of configure, since others might not be interested by your
285 o Create a file README.bin describing your distribution and
286 referring to *you* if problems arise. As a model, you can use the
287 file development/tools/README.bin.example, which can be a good
290 o Type `make bindist'. This will create a file
291 lyx-1.xx.yy-bin.tar.gz. Rename it to reflect you architecture
292 and the peculiarities of your build (e.g. static vs. dynamic).
294 o Check that everything is correct by unpacking the distribution
295 in some private place and running it. In particular, check the
296 output of `ldd lyx' to know which libraries are really needed.
298 o Upload your binary file to ftp.devel.lyx.org:/pub/incoming, and
299 notify larsbj@lyx.org.
305 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
306 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
307 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
310 o If you have problems indicating that configure cannot find a part of
311 the xforms or Xpm library, use the --with-extra-lib and --with-extra-inc
312 options of configure to specify where these libraries reside.
314 o Configure will seemingly fail to find xpm.h and forms.h on linux
315 if the kernel headers are not available. Two cases are possible:
317 - you have not installed the kernel sources. Then you should
318 install them or at least the kernel-headers package (or
319 whatever it is called in your distribution).
321 - you have the sources, but you did a 'make mrproper' in the
322 kernel directory (this this removes some symbolic links that
323 are needed for compilation). A 'make symlinks' in linux kernel
326 o if you are using RedHat Linux 7.x, you must make sure you have the
327 latest updated gcc and related packages installed (at least -85),
328 or LyX will not compile or will be mis-compiled.
330 o if you get an error message when compiling LyX that looks like this :
332 ../../src/minibuffer.h:17: using directive `Object' introduced
333 ambiguous type `_ObjectRec *'
335 then you need to upgrade the version of the xforms library you have
338 o It is possible to compile lyx with Tru64 Unix cxx compiler
339 version 6.2, provided one uses
340 CXX='cxx -std strict_ansi'
341 CXXFLAGS='-ptr /tmp/lyx_cxx_repository -g'
344 Note that this will not work when compiling directly from the cvs
345 repository, due to the tricks used by automake for dependencies. Ask
346 Jean-Marc.Lasgouttes@inria.fr for a workaround.
348 Or rather, it may well work if you are using automake 1.5 and autoconf 2.5
349 or greater, but you'll have to patch automake's depcomp first. (Depcomp
350 is a little shell script to automagically work out file dependencies
351 and it's broken for automake 1.5 and Tru64 :-(). The patch is to be found
352 in config/depcomp.diff.
353 Angus 22 March, 2002.
355 o On Tru64 Unix, you may have to compile with
356 --with-included-string to work around a Tru64 linker limitation
357 (the STL string template creates names which may be too long). We
358 also had reports that it helps with gcc 2.95.2 on solaris 2.6.
360 Using Tru64 Unix 4.0e, the std::string is fine.
361 Angus 22 March, 2002.
363 o On Tru64 Unix with cxx, you may have a compilation error in
364 lyx_main.C if you have GNU gettext installed. This is due to a bug
365 in gettext. To solve this, you can either (1) configure with
366 --with-included-gettext or (2) add -D__STDC__ to cxx flags.
368 o On Tru64 Unix 4.0e, the STL library routine std::count is broken
369 (/usr/include/cxx/algorithm.cc, line 289 on my machine).
370 It calculates "n" but does not return it! The fix is to add "return n;" to
371 the end of the (4-line long) routine.
372 Angus 22 March, 2002.
374 o On Tru64 Unix 4.0e, compilation of support/lyxsum.C dies horribly. The
375 work-around is to use the old version, 1.18, of this routine. Ask
376 Angus Leeming <leeming@lyx.org> for details.
377 Angus 22 March, 2002.
379 o According to David Sundqvist <David_Sundqvist@vd.volvo.se>, some
380 changes are needed to compile with aCC on HP-UX 10.20. These are the
381 relevant changes in the makefile (with comments tagged on):
383 CXX = /opt/aCC/bin/aCC
384 CXXFLAGS = -O +inst_none # The aCC compiler tries to run instantiations
385 # which currently break.
387 LIBS = -lforms -lXpm -lSM -lICE -lc -lm -lX11 -lCsup # must link with Csup
388 LDFLAGS = -L/opt/aCC/lib # perhaps not needed.