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: You need qt4/5 and qt4/5-devel packages
10 of the same version to compile LyX.
12 In general, it is also recommended to have pkg-config
13 installed (the name might vary depending on your
16 1) ./configure configures LyX according to your system. You
17 may have to set --with-qt-dir=<path-to-your-qt-installation>
18 (for example, "--with-qt-dir=/usr/share/qt4/") if the
19 environment variable QTDIR is not set and pkg-config is not
21 You will need --enable-qt5 switch for choosing qt5 over qt4.
23 See Note below if ./configure script is not present.
29 runs the program so you can check it out.
32 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
33 if you want a smaller binary.
36 Note for Git checkouts
37 -----------------------------
39 If you have checked this out from Git, you need to have:
40 * automake (supported versions are 1.14--1.16)
41 * autoconf (supported versions are 2.65--2.69)
42 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
43 files and proceed as stated above/below.
45 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
51 First of all, you will need a recent C++ compiler, where recent means
52 that the compilers are close to C++11 standard conforming like gcc (at
55 LyX makes great use of the C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
56 This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
57 library to be able to compile this version of LyX.
59 For full LyX usability we suggest to use Qt 5.6 and higher, or at the
60 very least Qt 5.4. For compilation you need to compile against at least
61 Qt 4.8 which has been widely tested, and for Windows we advise at least
62 Qt 4.8.4. The only special point to make is that you must ensure that
63 both LyX and the Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
65 To build LyX with spell checking capabilities included you have to
66 install at least one of the development packages of the spell checker
67 libraries. See the RELEASE-NOTES for details.
70 * Other things to note
72 If you make modifications to the source that affect any of the
73 translations or you change the translation files themselves (po/*.po)
74 files, you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed to
75 compile LyX with up-to-date translations (at least gettext version
76 0.16.1 is needed). You can get the latest version from:
77 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
79 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
81 o Python 2.7 must be installed. Python is used for many simple tasks
82 that are executed by external scripts, such as the automatic
83 configuration step and the import of older LyX documents with the
84 lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when opening a
85 file). Python 3 (3.3 or later) support is work in progress.
91 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
92 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
93 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
94 to create the Makefile by typing
98 For more complicated cases, LyX configure honors the following specific
101 o --enable-build-type=[rel(ease), pre(release), dev(elopment), prof(iling), gprof]
102 allows to tweak the compiled code. The following table describes
103 the settings in terms of various options that are described later
105 release prerelease development profiling gprof
106 optimization -O2 -O2 -O -O2 -O2
112 The defaults are as follows in terms of version number
113 release: stable release (2.x.y)
114 prerelease: version number contains alpha, beta, rc or pre.
115 development: version number contains dev.
117 The `profiling' build type uses the -fno-omit-frame-pointer option with gcc
119 The `gprof' build type compiles and links with -pg option with gcc.
121 o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
122 find extra libraries (qt4) it needs. Defaults to NONE
123 (i.e. search in standard places). You can specify several
124 directories, separated by colons.
126 o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
127 extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
128 You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
130 o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
131 --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
132 If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
134 o --with-version-suffix[=SUFFIX] will install LyX as lyxSUFFIX. The
135 LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyxSUFFIX/.
136 Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
137 $HOME/.lyxSUFFIX. The default for SUFFIX is "-<currentversion>",
140 You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
141 on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
142 own, by doing something like :
143 ./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestdev
145 Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
146 --program-suffix and the others will not affect the shared LyX
147 directory etc. so it is recommended that you use --with-version-suffix
148 (or --prefix) instead.
150 There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
153 o --disable-nls suppresses all internationalization support,
154 yielding somewhat smaller code.
156 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
157 languages in case you do not want to install all the translation
158 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
159 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
160 export LINGUAS='de fi'
161 before running configure.
163 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
165 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
166 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
168 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
169 files (documentation, templates and layout definitions)
171 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
173 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
174 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
176 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
177 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
179 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
180 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
181 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
184 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
185 comes to using relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
186 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
188 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
189 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
191 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
192 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
194 Similarly, if you want to force the use of a specific compiler, you can
195 give a value to the CXX variable.
197 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
200 The following options allow you to tweak the generated code more precisely (see the description of --enable-build-type for the default values):
202 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
203 higher level than the default, for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
205 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
206 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
207 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
209 o --disable-std-regex forces the compiler to use boost::regex. The default is
210 to use std::regex for known good C++ libraries, but the test is not robust for clang.
211 --enable-std-regex will force the use of std::regex.
213 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
214 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try
215 to debug problems in LyX. There is no run-time penalty.
217 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
218 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings.
220 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
221 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
222 is --disable-assertions.
224 o --enable-stdlib-debug adds some debug code in the standard
225 library; this slows down the code, but has been helpful in the
226 past to find bugs. Note that this is in general incompatible with
227 the system boost library (which is used when
228 --without-included-boost is specified). You may have to use
229 --disable-stdlib-debug when linking development versions against
230 your system's boost library.
231 The same problem applies to hunspell (as of hunspell 1.5). So either
232 compile --with-included-hunspell or --disable-stdlib-debug when
233 linking development versions against your system's hunspell library.
235 o --enable-monolithic-build[=boost,client,insets,mathed,core,tex2lyx,frontend-qt4]
236 that enables monolithic build of the given parts of the source
237 code. This should reduce the compilation time provided you have
238 enough memory (>500MB).
241 Compiling and installing LyX
242 ----------------------------
244 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
251 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
252 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
253 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
257 BTW: in the lib/images subdirectory there is also small icons
258 `lyx.png' and `lyx.svg', that can be used to display LyX documents in
261 If configure fails for some strange reason
262 ------------------------------------------
264 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You can always check
265 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
267 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
268 ------------------------------------
270 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
271 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
272 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
273 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
274 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
275 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
276 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
278 If you have to use a `make' that does not support the `VPATH'
279 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
280 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
281 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
287 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
288 team members or users to help compiling on some particular
289 architectures. If you find that some of these hints are wrong, please
292 o On SUN Sparc Solaris, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
293 work with Solaris make.
295 The Solaris 8 ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
296 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
297 There is no problem with the Solaris 9 and 10 ar.
299 Qt4 uses the Xrender X11 extension for antialiased fonts. This
300 extension was added to Xsun starting from the Solaris 10 8/07
301 release, but it is not activated by default. To activate it, you
302 must issue (as root) the following command:
303 svccfg -s svc:/application/x11/x11-server setprop options/server_args=+xrender
304 and then restart the X server.
306 There is a problem with the fontconfig library shipped with
307 Solaris 10 8/07 causing a seg-fault when it is used by Qt4.
308 Until this is fixed, a workaround is replacing the shared library
309 /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 with a copy from a previous release or
310 installing a new version of fontconfig from http://www.sunfreeware.com/
312 On Solaris, the default fontconfig configuration gives preference
313 to bitmap fonts at (not so small) sizes. As bitmapped fonts are not
314 antialiased, you may prefer changing this configuration. This may be
315 done by adding the following stanza
317 <match target="pattern">
318 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">
323 to either ~/.fonts.conf (for a per-user change) or /etc/fonts/local.conf
324 (for a global system change). The stanza should be added between the
325 <fontconfig> and </fontconfig> tags. If neither ~/.fonts.conf nor
326 /etc/fonts/local.conf exists, you can create them with the following
329 <?xml version="1.0"?>
330 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
332 <match target="pattern">
333 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">