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.
12 1) ./configure --with-frontend=[qt or xforms]
13 configures LyX according to your system.
14 When compiling for Qt, you may have to set
15 --with-qt-dir=<path-to-your-qt-installation>
16 if the environment variable QTDIR is not set.
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:
36 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
37 files and proceed as stated below.
39 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
44 First of all, you will also need a recent C++ compiler, where recent
45 means that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming.
46 Compilers that are known to compile LyX are gcc 2.95.x and later
47 and Digital C++ version 6.1 and later. Please tell us your experience
50 It is _not_ possible to compile LyX with gcc 2.7.x and 2.8.x.
52 LyX 1.4.x 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. Users of gcc 2.95.x
55 will have to install the STLPort version of these libraries as the
56 ones that come with gcc 2.95.x are too broken for us to use.
60 LyX has been tested with Qt 3.x, though Qt 2.x may happen to work too.
61 The only special point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX
62 and the Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
64 Note that if Qt is using Xft2/fontconfig, you may need to install the
65 latex-xft-fonts package (at ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib/) to get
66 maths symbols displayed properly. To find out, type:
68 ldd `which lyx` | grep fontconfig
70 at the console. Both RH8 and Debian unstable distributions are known
73 If, however, your version of Qt does not use fontconfig, then TeX
74 fonts should be added to the font path. 'man xset' is your friend.
78 Both an Xforms and Xpm libraries should be installed to compile LyX.
79 It is imperative that you have the correct versions of these
80 libraries, and their associated header files.
82 The xforms library has been very recently updated to version 1.0.
83 This version has been released under the LGPL (Lesser General Public
84 License), and the availability of the source means that many bugs that
85 have been plaguing LyX have been fixed in xforms. You are advised to
86 upgrade to xforms 1.0 to enjoy all these new fixes.
87 In fact, LyX 1.4.x no longer supports versions of xforms older than 1.0.
89 You can get the source from
90 http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/xforms/
92 If you use a rpm-based linux distribution, such as RedHat or Mandrake,
93 we recommend that you grab a version of xforms from
94 ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib
95 Look for the xforms-1.0-release.src.rpm or the binary libforms*.i386.rpm.
97 In addition, you must have libXpm version 4.7 or newer.
99 * Other things to note
101 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
102 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
103 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
105 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
107 To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
109 http://aiksaurus.sourceforge.net/
111 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
113 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
114 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
115 that users can run these tests manually with Edit>Reconfigure.
117 o Python 1.5.2 or newer installed to be able to import older LyX files
118 with the lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when
122 Creating the Makefile
123 ---------------------
125 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
126 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
127 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
128 to create the Makefile by typing
132 For more complicated cases, LyX configure takes the following specific
135 o --with-frontend=FRONTEND that allows to specify which frontend you
136 want to use. Default is "xforms", and the other possible value is
139 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
140 find extra libraries (Xpm, xforms, qt) it needs. Defaults to NONE
141 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
142 directories, separated by colons.
144 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
145 xforms headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
146 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
148 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
149 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
150 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
152 o --with-version-suffix will install LyX as lyx-<version>, e.g. lyx-1.3.1
153 The LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyx-1.3.1/.
154 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
157 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
158 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
159 own, by doing something like :
160 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestcvs
162 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
163 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
164 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
165 (or --prefix) instead.
167 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
168 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
170 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
171 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
172 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
174 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
175 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
176 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
177 for development versions and prereleases only.
179 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
182 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
183 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
185 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
186 library, although you might have another one installed.
188 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
189 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
192 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
193 language in case you do not want to install all the translation
194 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
195 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
196 export LINGUAS='de fi'
197 before running configure.
199 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
201 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
202 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
204 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
205 files (lyxrc example, documentation, templates and layouts
206 definitions) will be installed.
207 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
209 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
210 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
212 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
213 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
215 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
216 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
217 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
220 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
221 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
222 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
224 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
225 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
227 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
228 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
230 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
231 give a value to the CXX variable.
233 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
236 In particular, the following options could be useful in some desperate
239 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
240 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
241 this flag is on for development versions only.
243 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
244 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
245 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
246 development versions only.
248 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
249 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
250 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
251 flag, please report it as a bug.
254 Compiling and installing LyX
255 ----------------------------
257 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
264 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
265 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
266 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
270 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.xpm",
271 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
273 If configure fails for some strange reason
274 ------------------------------------------
276 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
277 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
279 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
280 ------------------------------------
282 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
283 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
284 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
285 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
286 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
287 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
288 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
290 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
291 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
292 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
293 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
296 Preparing a binary distribution for the use of others
297 ------------------------------------------------------
299 o Compile LyX with the right compiler switches for your
300 architecture. Make sure you use the --without-latex-config switch
301 of configure, since others might not be interested by your
304 o Create a file README.bin describing your distribution and
305 referring to *you* if problems arise. As a model, you can use the
306 file development/tools/README.bin.example, which can be a good
309 o Type `make bindist'. This will create a file
310 lyx-1.xx.yy-bin.tar.gz. Rename it to reflect you architecture
311 and the peculiarities of your build (e.g. static vs. dynamic).
313 o Check that everything is correct by unpacking the distribution
314 in some private place and running it. In particular, check the
315 output of `ldd lyx' to know which libraries are really needed.
317 o Upload your binary file to ftp.devel.lyx.org:/pub/incoming, and
318 notify larsbj@lyx.org.
324 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
325 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
326 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
329 o If you have problems indicating that configure cannot find a part of
330 the xforms or Xpm library, use the --with-extra-lib and --with-extra-inc
331 options of configure to specify where these libraries reside.
333 o Configure will seemingly fail to find xpm.h and forms.h on linux
334 if the kernel headers are not available. Two cases are possible:
336 - you have not installed the kernel sources. Then you should
337 install them or at least the kernel-headers package (or
338 whatever it is called in your distribution).
340 - you have the sources, but you did a 'make mrproper' in the
341 kernel directory (this this removes some symbolic links that
342 are needed for compilation). A 'make symlinks' in linux kernel
345 o if you are using RedHat Linux 7.x, you must make sure you have the
346 latest updated gcc and related packages installed (at least -85),
347 or LyX will not compile or will be mis-compiled.
349 o On SUN Sparc Solaris 8, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
350 work with Solaris make.
352 The Solaris ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
353 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
355 o LyX can be compiled on Tru64 Unix with either GNU's gcc or the default
358 There are no Alpha-specific problems with gcc.
360 The following notes all refer to compilation with the Compaq cxx compiler.
362 LyX cannot be compiled on Tru64 Unix 4.0d or 4.0e with the default cxx
363 compiler. You should upgrade to at least cxx V6.2, to be found at
364 ftp::/ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/C-CXX/tru64/cxx/CXX622V40.tar. Users
365 running Tru64 Unix 4.0f and greater should have no real problems compiling
368 cxx V6.2 will compile LyX out of the box.
369 cxx V6.3-020 is also known to work, although there is a bug in
370 /usr/include/cxx/deque that will break compilation in FormPreferences.C.
371 Compaq are investigating, but a patch that works /now/ is:
373 --- /usr/include/cxx/deque_safe Mon Mar 4 21:09:50 2002
374 +++ /usr/include/cxx/deque Mon Mar 4 21:09:00 2002
377 if (size() >= x.size())
378 erase(copy(x.begin(), x.end(), begin()), end());
380 - copy(x.begin() + size(), x.end(),
381 - inserter(*this,copy(x.begin(),x.begin()+size(),begin())));
383 + const_iterator mid = x.begin() + difference_type(size());
384 + copy(x.begin(), mid, begin());
385 + insert(end(), mid, x.end());
391 At the time of writing, cxx V6.5-026 is the latest cxx compiler. It is
392 /not/ recommended. The compiler itself appears to be both buggy and
393 extremely bloated (trebling the size of the stripped LyX binary).
395 In order to compile LyX with the cxx compiler, you should run configure
396 with the following flags:
397 CXX='cxx -std strict_ansi'
398 CXXFLAGS='-nopure_cname -nocleanup -ptr /tmp/lyx_cxx_repository -O2'
400 The -nopure_cname flag is needed for compilers V6.3 and above because
401 LyX makes use of functions like popen, pclose that are defined in the
402 c version of <stdio.h> but are not formally part of any c/c++ standard.
403 They are not, therefore, included in the <cstdio> header file.