========================= Building LyX with SCons ========================= July, 2006 The GNU Build System (autoconf, automake and make) has been used to build and distribute lyx. These de facto *nix tools are readily available and widely supported on the *nix systems, but not so under windows. They are not necessarily easy to use and maintain (at least to non-m4 experts) either. Because of these, a scons (http://www.scons.org) build system has been set up as an alternative way to build lyx. As of writing, this system only supports the qt4 frontend. This file is organized as follows: 1. General usage of scons 2. *nix systems (Linux, Solaris and Mac OSX) 3. Windows/mingw 4. Windows/cygwin 5. Windows/msvc 6. Tips and hints 7. Troubleshooting 1. General usage of scons ========================= Prerequisites: -------------- * Python: Python >= 2.6.0 is required to run scons, while LyX itself requires Python >= 2.4.0 for scripts such as configure.py. Python is widely available on non-windows systems. Windows users can download and install python from http://www.python.org. * SCons: scons >= 1.1.0 is needed. You can either use a full system-wide scons distribution or a light-weight one (called scons-local) installed along with the lyx source tree. Both variants of scons are freely available from http://www.scons.org. Note that LyX source may ship with scons-base in the near future. * Other libraries: These include zlib (required), qt4 (required), gettext (optional), boost (optional), aspell (optional) and Aiksaurus (optional). Please refer to the system-specific sections regarding the availability and installation of them. Start scons: ------------ The scons system resides under development/scons. You can invoke it from either development/scons by, for example: > cd development/scons > scons frontend=qt4 qt_dir=d:/qt4 -j3 lyx or from any other directory and use -f option to point to the SConstruct file: > mkdir build > cd build > scons -f ../development/scons/SConstruct frontend=qt4 all If you are tired of typing development/scons/SConstruct, you can link development/scons/SConstruct to the top source directory and use this SConstruct file. There are three types of command line options: * key=value are user options. They are used to tell scons which frontend to use, whether or not use included boost libraries etc. You can use 'scons -h' to list all of the options. * parameters start with - or -- are scons options. Useful ones include -j3 (with three threads) and --config=force (force reconfiguration). * others options are targets, which are lyx objects to build. User Options: ------------- Here I only list important options that you will likely use. Full option list with detailed description and default value can be displayed using command 'scons -h'. Components to use/build: * frontend=qt4: qt4 is the only option right now. * mode=debug/release: lyx will be built under the debug or release directory, with different default build options. * boost=included/system/auto: whether or not use included boost, system boost, or try to detect system boost first. Note that boost=included is safer if system boost has a different version from the included one. * gettext=included/system/auto * nls=yes/no whether or not enable natural language support. * spell=aspell/auto: spell engine Paths: Most of them will be probed if not specified. * qt_dir: top level directory of qt (with at least subdirectory bin containing commands uic and moc) * qt_lib_path: path to the qt library, use only if there is no $qt_dir/lib * qt_inc_path: path to qt include directory, use only if there is no $qt_dir/include * extra_inc_path, extra_inc_path1, extra_lib_path, extra_lib_path1: additional paths to other libraries * extra_bin_path: a convenient way to add an extra path to $PATH Convenience options: * load_option=yes/no/opt1,opt2/-opt1,opt2: if true, load previously saved command line options so you can run 'scons install' directly after a long 'scons all' building command. You can load selected options using load_option=opt1,opt2,... or exclude options using the - version of it. Note that the option 'bundle' is not reloaded. * rebuild=target1,target2... By default, scons will exam all components when you build lyx. You can free scons from some hard work and save yourself some time by telling scons to rebuild only specified component(s). rebuild=no, none, yes or all can be used as well. * log_file: a log file of executed commands, default to scons_lyx.log Installation options: * prefix: directory where lyx will be installed * exec_dir: directory where lyx binaries will be installed. Default to $prefix/bin * DESTDIR: if specified, install to this directory instead of $prefix. * version_suffix=yes/no/something : if specified, this suffix will be appended to the user data directory. * win_installer: if specified under windows, and if 'installer' target is given, generate NSIS installer specifed as win_installer which can be a full path name. The default is lyx-version-timestamp-Installer.exe for a development version, and lyx-version-Installer.exe for a released version. Compiler choice and flags: * use_vc: use msvc instead of mingw g++ under windows * optimization: optimization flag to use (e.g. -O2) * CC, LINK, CPP, CXX, CCFLAGS, LINKFLAGS etc: compiler commands and flags. Setting CCFLAGS etc will replace default flags. These variables can be set as environment variables as well. Targets: -------- You can specify one or more of the following targets: Static libraries (names correspond to their directories): boost, intl, support, mathed, insets, frontends, graphics, controllers, client, qt4, lyxbase Programs: tex2lyx, client, lyx, all = tex2lyx + client + lyx Installation: po, install = all + po, installer (windows only, need NSIS) Misc: msvs_projects, update_po Your built targets are put into $build_dir, which is debug (mode=debug), release (mode=release) or any name specified via build_dir=name. The directory structure is: $build_dir - common: most of the intermediate files, mostly object files - libs: all static libraries - executables: lyxclient, tex2lyx, lyx MSVS projects will be put to development/scons (and you should invoke scons from there for this target). update_po is similar to 'cd po; make update-po' but does not generate .gmo files, which is the task of the install target. Note that this target is the only target that changes files (po/*.po in this case) of the lyx source tree. A typical working sequence: --------------------------- > cd development/scons > scons frontend=qt4 qt_dir=/path/to/qt4 (build lyx, and all needed libraries...) > scons all -j3 (build lyx, client and tex2lyx, options like qt_dir will be carried over here) > scons rebuild=lyxbase (working on LyX.cpp, so only need to rebuild lyxbase) > scons (build again, only lyxbase will be rebuilt) > scons prefix=/usr/site DESTDIR=/install/dir (lyx is built for /usr/site, but install to /install/dir) 2. *nix systems (Linux, Solaris and Mac OSX) ============================================ Proper use of extra_inc_path, qt_dir etc should solve most of the problems. 3. Windows/mingw ================ * install mingw with the following packages: binutils-2.16.91-...tar.gz gcc-core-3.4.5-...tar.gz gcc-g++-3.4.5-...tar.gz mingw-runtime-3.9.tar.gz mingw-utils-0.3.tar.gz MSYS-1.0.11-...exe msysDTK-1.0.1.exe w32api-3.6.tar.gz * install the latest Qt official "open source" binary package for Windows/Mingw (required) * install mingw/zlib (required): Download zlib binaries and developer files (zlib-1.2.3-bin.zip and zlib-1.2.3-lib.zip) from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/zlib.htm . * install iconv (optional): Download libiconv from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libiconv.htm The complete package (without source) is recommended. You may also try the windows binary (libiconv-x.x.x.bin.woe32.zip) of iconv from one of the GNU mirrors listed in http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html. * install gettext (optional): Download gettext from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gettext.htm The complete package (without source) is recommended. You may also try the windows binary (gettext-runtime-x.x.x.bin.woe32.zip and gettext-tools-x.x.x.bin.woe32.zip) from one of the GNU mirrors (e.g. http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/gnu/gettext/). * install aspell (optional): LyX uses aspell 0.60.4 and there is no, as of now, official windows version. If you do not want to compile aspell from source by yourself, your best bet is using Abdel's lyx 1.5.0svn experimental package located at http://wiki.lyx.org/Windows/LyX150Experimental. The link to his pre-built aspell package is http://younes.a.free.fr/Lyx-15-experimental * install aiksaurus (optional): Try to build aiksaurus from source (both mingw or msvc should work), or look for pre-built package from the lyx 1.5.0svn experimental page. * Open a mingw xterm, and start scons as usual. Note: gettext, iconv and zlib are usually decompressed to c:/mingw so no extra_inc_path etc is needed. 4. Windows/cygwin ================= To build lyx for cygwin, you should * install (using the cygwin setup program) at least the following packages and all other packages pulled in by dependencies: aspell gzip libiconv libQtGui4 aspell-dev gettext libpng libQtGui4-devel gcc gettext-devel libQtCore4 pkg-config gcc4 libintl8 libQtCore4-devel python * install aiksaurus (http://aiksaurus.sourceforge.net/, optional): There is no cygwin package for aiksaurus, so you should build it from source. However, aiksaurus builds smoothly on cygwin. * run scons as you would do under linux. Note: cygwin/qt does not follow the usual $qt_dir/include, $qt_dir/bin, $qt_dir/lib directory structure. For example, cygwin/qt4 uses directories /usr/include/qt4, /usr/lib/qt4/bin and /usr/lib/qt4/lib. If these directories can not be detected automatically, use options, for example, qt_dir=/usr/lib/qt4 qt_inc_path=/usr/include/qt4 5. Windows/msvc =============== To build lyx with msvc, you should * install msvc It is recommended that you use MSVC2005 Express edition which is freely available from microsoft. * get windows platform SDK Please follow the link in the MSVC webpage to download and configure. It is important that you add SDK paths to %INCLUDE% and %LIB% in, e.g., C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat. If you plan to use the MSVS IDE, you should also update the Visual C++ directories in VCProjectEngine.dll.express.config, as suggested in http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/usingpsdk/. * build qt4 - download qt4 source from trolltech (not the binary version, which only works with mingw) - get q../free patch for qt4 - compile qt4 as instructed * download and install the official zlib library from www.zlib.org. * optionally install iconv, gettext, aspell, aiksaurus following the mingw instructions. * start from msvc command prompt, use the use_vc option to build lyx. You may need to use extra_inc_path etc to point to zlib paths. * you can use the msvs_projects target to obtain msvc project files for each lyx component. - go to development/scons (important) - run > scons [other options] msvs_projects Note that - The resulting project files will use scons to build lyx - All command line options, including rebuild, can be used as usual (when msvs invoke scons). - To use the msvc debugger, you have to use mode=debug (default). 6. Tips and hints ================= * Using external boost libraries (install boost libraries and use option boost=system) can speed up scons' starting time a lot, since the boost headers will then be considered as system headers and will not be included in the dependency tree. 7. Troubleshooting ================== When you get an error: Q. Some path is not found. A, Try options such as extra_inc_path, extra_lib_path. Q. A test fails (failed to find zlib etc). A. Have a look at config.log. Q. I get a linking error. A. Get the command sequence from scons_lyx.log and see what could have gone wrong. You usually only need to tweak the last linking command. Q. Still can not figure it out. A. Send an email to lyx-devel mailing list. Q. Feeling too impatient/adventurous to wait for list response. A. Read SConstruct and SConscript and see what went wrong. Trust me, they are much easier to decipher than the autoconf/m4 files.