1 Compiling and installing LyX with autotools
2 ===========================================
4 This document is about compiling LyX with the autotools suite. If you
5 want to compile using using CMake (in particular on windows), please
6 refer to the INSTALL.cmake file.
9 Quick compilation guide
10 -----------------------
12 These four steps will compile, test and install LyX:
14 0) Linux users beware: You need qt5 and qt5-devel packages
15 of the same version to compile LyX.
17 In general, it is also recommended to have pkg-config
18 installed (the name might vary depending on your
21 1) ./configure configures LyX according to your system. You
22 may have to set --with-qt-dir=<path-to-your-qt-installation>
23 (for example, "--with-qt-dir=/usr/share/qt5/") if the
24 environment variable QTDIR is not set and pkg-config is not
27 See Note below if ./configure script is not present.
33 runs the program so you can check it out.
36 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
37 if you want a smaller binary.
40 Note for Git checkouts
41 -----------------------------
43 If you have checked this out from Git, you need to have:
44 * automake (supported versions are 1.14--1.16)
45 * autoconf (supported versions are 2.65--2.69)
46 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
47 files and proceed as stated above/below.
49 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
55 First of all, you will need a C++11 standard conforming compiler, like g++ (at
56 least 4.9, to have proper srd::regex) or clang++.
58 LyX makes great use of the C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
59 This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
60 library to be able to compile this version of LyX.
62 For full LyX usability we suggest to use Qt 5.6 and higher, or at the
63 very least Qt 5.4. It is also possible to compile against Qt 6.The
64 only special point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX and
65 the Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
67 To build LyX with spell checking capabilities included you have to
68 install at least one of the development packages of the spell checker
69 libraries. See the RELEASE-NOTES for details.
71 Users of debian-based distributions are well advised to run
72 'apt-get build-dep lyx' before compiling to install proper dependencies.
75 * Other things to note
77 If you make modifications to the source that affect any of the
78 translations or you change the translation files themselves (po/*.po)
79 files, you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed to
80 compile LyX with up-to-date translations (at least gettext version
81 0.16.1 is needed). You can get the latest version from:
82 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
84 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
86 o Python (2.7 or 3.5 and newer) must be installed. Python is used for many
87 simple tasks that are executed by external scripts, such as the automatic
88 configuration step and the import of older LyX documents with the lyx2lyx
89 script (this script is called automatically when opening a file).
95 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
96 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
97 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
98 to create the Makefile by typing
102 For more complicated cases, LyX configure honors the following specific
105 o --enable-build-type=[rel(ease), pre(release), dev(elopment), prof(iling), gprof]
106 allows to tweak the compiled code. The following table describes
107 the settings in terms of various options that are described later
109 release prerelease development profiling gprof
110 optimization -O2 -O2 -O -O2 -O2
118 The defaults are as follows in terms of version number:
119 release: stable release (2.x.y)
120 prerelease: version number contains `alpha', `beta', `rc' or `pre'.
121 development: version number contains `dev'.
123 The `profiling' build type uses the -fno-omit-frame-pointer option with gcc
125 The `gprof' build type compiles and links with -pg option with gcc.
127 o --enable-qt6 that checks configuration with Qt 6.x, and then Qt
128 5.x. By default, only Qt5 is tried.
130 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
131 find extra libraries (like Qt) it needs. Defaults to NONE
132 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
133 directories, separated by colons.
135 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
136 extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
137 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
139 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
140 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
141 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
143 o --with-version-suffix[=SUFFIX] will install LyX as lyxSUFFIX. The
144 LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyxSUFFIX/.
145 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
146 $HOME/.lyxSUFFIX. The default for SUFFIX is "-<currentversion>",
149 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
150 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
151 own, by doing something like :
152 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestdev
154 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
155 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
156 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
157 (or --prefix) instead.
159 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
162 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
163 yielding somewhat smaller code.
165 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
166 languages in case you do not want to install all the translation
167 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
168 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
169 export LINGUAS='de fi'
170 before running configure.
172 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
174 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
175 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
177 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
178 files (documentation, templates and layout definitions)
180 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
182 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
183 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
185 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
186 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
188 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
189 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
190 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
193 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
194 comes to using relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
195 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
197 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
198 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
200 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
201 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
203 Similarly, if you want to force the use of a specific compiler, you can
204 give a value to the CXX variable.
206 The following options allow you to tweak the generated code more
207 precisely (see the description of --enable-build-type for the default
210 o --enable-cxx-mode=VALUE can be used to select a C++ standard, for
211 example --enable-cxx-mode=11. The default is to try C++14, and then
214 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
215 higher level than the default, for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
217 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
218 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
219 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
221 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
222 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try
223 to debug problems in LyX. There is no run-time penalty.
225 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
226 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings.
228 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
229 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
230 is --disable-assertions.
232 o --enable-stdlib-assertions adds some bound checking code in the
233 libstdc++ standard library; this slows down the code, but has been
234 helpful in the past to find bugs. This has no effect when using
235 llvm's libc++ library.
237 o --enable-stdlib-debug encompasses stdlib-assertions and adds
238 additional checks in libstdc++. Note that this changes the ABI and
239 is in general incompatible with the system hunspell library (as of
240 version 1.5). You may have to use --disable-stdlib-debug when
241 linking development versions against your system's hunspell
242 library. This has no effect when using llvm's libc++ library.
246 Compiling and installing LyX
247 ----------------------------
249 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
256 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
257 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
258 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
262 BTW: in the lib/images subdirectory there is also small icons
263 `lyx.png' and `lyx.svg', that can be used to display LyX documents in
266 If configure fails for some strange reason
267 ------------------------------------------
269 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You can always check
270 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
272 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
273 ------------------------------------
275 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
276 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
277 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
278 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
279 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
280 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
281 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
283 If you have to use a `make' that does not support the `VPATH'
284 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
285 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
286 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another