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 qt4 and qt4-devel packages of the same version to compile LyX.
13 configures LyX according to your system.
14 When compiling for Qt, you may have to set
15 --with-qt4-dir=<path-to-your-qt4-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 Subversion checkouts
30 -----------------------------
32 If you have checked this out from Subversion, 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 (gcc 3.x).
47 LyX 1.6.x makes great use of C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
48 This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
49 library to be able to compile this version of LyX.
51 LyX has been tested with Qt 4.2.x and Qt 4.3.x. The only special point
52 to make is that you must ensure that both LyX and the Qt libraries are
53 compiled with the same C++ compiler.
55 Note that if Qt is using Xft2/fontconfig, you may need to install the
56 latex-xft-fonts package (at ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib/) to get
57 maths symbols displayed properly. To find out, type:
59 ldd `which lyx` | grep fontconfig
61 at the console. Most recent distributions are known to use fontconfig.
63 If, however, your version of Qt does not use fontconfig, then TeX
64 fonts should be added to the font path. 'man xset' is your friend.
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 To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
76 http://aiksaurus.sourceforge.net/
78 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
80 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
81 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
82 that users can run these tests manually with Tools>Reconfigure.
84 o Python 2.3 or newer installed to be able to import older LyX files
85 with the lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when
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 takes the following specific
102 o --enable-build-type=[rel(ease), dev(elopment), pre(release)]
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
107 optimization -O2 -O2 -O
114 The default are as follows in terms of version number
115 release: stable release (1.x.y)
116 prerelease: version number contains alpha, beta, rc or pre.
117 development: version number contains svn.
119 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
120 find extra libraries (qt4) it needs. Defaults to NONE
121 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
122 directories, separated by colons.
124 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
125 extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
126 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
128 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
129 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
130 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
132 o --with-version-suffix[=VERSION] will install LyX as lyx-VERSION,
133 e.g. lyx-1.6.1. The LyX data directory will be something like
134 <whatever>/lyx-1.6.1/. Additionally your user configuration files
135 will be found in e.g. $HOME/.lyx-1.6.1
137 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
138 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
139 own, by doing something like :
140 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestsvn
142 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
143 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
144 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
145 (or --prefix) instead.
147 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
150 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
151 yielding a somewhat smaller code.
153 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
154 library, although you might have another one installed.
156 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
157 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
160 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
161 language in case you do not want to install all the translation
162 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
163 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
164 export LINGUAS='de fi'
165 before running configure.
167 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
169 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
170 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
172 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
173 files (documentation, templates and layout definitions)
175 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
177 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
178 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
180 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
181 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
183 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
184 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
185 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
188 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
189 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
190 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
192 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
193 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
195 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
196 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
198 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
199 give a value to the CXX variable.
201 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
204 The following options allow to tweak more precisely the generated code:
206 o --enable-profiling instruments the code for use with the gprof
207 profiler. The result are only meaningful in conjunction with
208 --enable-build-type=release.
210 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
211 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
213 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
214 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
215 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
217 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
218 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
219 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
220 for development versions and prereleases only.
222 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
223 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
224 this flag is on for development versions only.
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. By default, this flag is on for
229 development versions only.
231 o --enable-stdlib-debug adds some debug code in the standard
232 library; this slows down the code, but has been helpful in the
233 past to find bugs. By default, this flag is on for development
236 o --enable-concept-checks adds some compile-time checks. There is no
237 run-time penalty. By default, this flag is on for development
240 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
241 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
242 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
243 flag, please report it as a bug.
245 o --with-frontend=FRONTEND that allows to specify which frontend you
246 want to use. The default value is qt4, which is the only available
249 o --enable-monolithic-[boost,client,insets,mathed,core,tex2lyx,frontend-qt4]
250 that enable monolithic build of the given part of the source code. This
251 should reduce the compilation time provided you have enough memory
255 Compiling and installing LyX
256 ----------------------------
258 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
265 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
266 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
267 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
271 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.png",
272 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
274 If configure fails for some strange reason
275 ------------------------------------------
277 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
278 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
280 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
281 ------------------------------------
283 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
284 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
285 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
286 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
287 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
288 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
289 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
291 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
292 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
293 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
294 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
300 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
301 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
302 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
305 o On SUN Sparc Solaris, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
306 work with Solaris make.
308 The Solaris 8 ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
309 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
310 There is no problem with the Solaris 9 and 10 ar.
312 Qt4 uses the Xrender X11 extension for antialiased fonts. This
313 extension was added to Xsun starting from the Solaris 10 8/07
314 release, but it is not activated by default. To activate it, you
315 must issue (as root) the following command:
316 svccfg -s svc:/application/x11/x11-server setprop options/server_args=+xrender
317 and then restart the X server.
319 There is a problem with the fontconfig library shipped with
320 Solaris 10 8/07 causing a seg-fault when it is used by Qt4.
321 Until this is fixed, a workaround is replacing the shared library
322 /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 with a copy from a previous release or
323 installing a new version of fontconfig from http://www.sunfreeware.com/
325 On Solaris, the default fontconfig configuration gives preference
326 to bitmap fonts at (not so small) sizes. As bitmapped fonts are not
327 antialiased, you may prefer changing this configuration. This may be
328 done by adding the following stanza
330 <match target="pattern">
331 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">
336 to either ~/.fonts.conf (for a per-user change) or /etc/fonts/local.conf
337 (for a global system change). The stanza should be added between the
338 <fontconfig> and </fontconfig> tags. If neither ~/.fonts.conf nor
339 /etc/fonts/local.conf exist, you can create them with the following
342 <?xml version="1.0"?>
343 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
345 <match target="pattern">
346 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">