These four steps will compile, test and install LyX:
- 1) ./configure
- configures LyX to your system. By default, LyX configures
- the xforms frontend, use --with-frontend=qt to build a Qt
- version.
+ 0) Linux users beware: if compiling the Qt frontend, you need
+ qt and qt-devel packages of the same version to compile LyX.
+
+ 1) ./configure --with-frontend=[qt or xforms]
+ configures LyX according to your system.
+ When compiling for Qt, you may have to set
+ --with-qt-dir=<path-to-your-qt-installation>
+ if the environment variable QTDIR is not set.
2) make
compiles the program.
Note for CVS checkouts
----------------------
-If you have checked this out from CVS, you need to have
-automake, autoconf, and gettext installed. Then,
-type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
+If you have checked this out from CVS, you need to have:
+* automake >= 1.9
+* autoconf >= 2.52
+* gettext >= 0.12
+Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
files and proceed as stated below.
You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
First of all, you will also need a recent C++ compiler, where recent
means that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming.
-Compilers that are known to compile LyX are egcs 1.1.x, gcc 2.95.x and
-later, and Digital C++ version 6.1 and later. Please tell us your
-experience with other compilers. It is _not_ possible to compile LyX
-with gcc 2.7.x and 2.8.x, and this is not likely to change in the
-future.
+Compilers that are known to compile LyX are gcc 2.95.x and later
+and Digital C++ version 6.1 and later. Please tell us your experience
+with other compilers.
+
+It is _not_ possible to compile LyX with gcc 2.7.x and 2.8.x.
+
+LyX 1.4.x makes great use of C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
+This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
+library to be able to compile this version of LyX. Users of gcc 2.95.x
+will have to install the STLPort version of these libraries as the
+ones that come with gcc 2.95.x are too broken for us to use.
+
+* Qt frontend
+
+LyX has been tested with Qt 3.x, though Qt 2.x may happen to work too.
+The only special point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX
+and the Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
+
+Note that if Qt is using Xft2/fontconfig, you may need to install the
+latex-xft-fonts package (at ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib/) to get
+maths symbols displayed properly. To find out, type:
+
+ ldd `which lyx` | grep fontconfig
+
+at the console. Both RH8 and Debian unstable distributions are known
+to use fontconfig.
-Note that, contrary to LyX 1.0.x, LyX 1.3.x makes great use of C++
-Standard Template Library (STL); this means that gcc users will have
-to install the relevant libstdc++ library to be able to compile this
-version.
+If, however, your version of Qt does not use fontconfig, then TeX
+fonts should be added to the font path. 'man xset' is your friend.
* xforms frontend
License), and the availability of the source means that many bugs that
have been plaguing LyX have been fixed in xforms. You are advised to
upgrade to xforms 1.0 to enjoy all these new fixes.
-In fact, LyX 1.3.0 no longer supports versions of xforms older than 0.89.5.
+In fact, LyX 1.4.x no longer supports versions of xforms older than 1.0.
You can get the source from
- http://world.std.com/~xforms/
- ftp://ncmir.ucsd.edu/pub/xforms/OpenSource/xforms-1.0-release.tgz
- ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/xforms/OpenSource/xforms-1.0-release.tgz
+ http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/xforms/
If you use a rpm-based linux distribution, such as RedHat or Mandrake,
we recommend that you grab a version of xforms from
In addition, you must have libXpm version 4.7 or newer.
-* Qt frontend
-
-LyX has been tested with both Qt 2.x and 3.x libraries. The only special
-point to make is that you must ensure that both LyX and the Qt libraries
-are compiled with the same C++ compiler.
-
-Note that if Qt is using Xft2/fontconfig, you may need to install the
-latex-ttf-fonts package, tobe found on ftp://ftp.lyx.org/ to get maths
-symbols displayed properly. To find out, type:
- ldd `which lyx` | grep fontconfig
-at the console. Both RH8 and Debian unstable distributions are known
-to use fontconfig.
-
-If, however, your version of Qt does not use fontconfig, then the
-/usr/local/share/lyx/xfonts directory (or equivalent) should be added to
-the font path. This is done automatically by LyX if LyX is run on
-the local machine, and the X server supports Postscript fonts. If, however,
-you're running LyX remotely, then you'll have to do this step yourself.
-'man xset' is your friend.
-
* Other things to note
If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
from:
- ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/gettext-0.11.4.tar.gz
-
-LyX contains a hack to work around this, but you should not rely too
-much on it.
+ ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
from:
- http://aiken.clan11.com/aiksaurus/
+ http://aiksaurus.sourceforge.net/
The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
- o Perl (at least 5.002) is needed for the reLyX script. reLyX will
- not be installed if perl is not found. If the environment
- variable PERL is set to point to some program, this value will be
- used, even if the program does no exist (this can be useful if
- the machine on which LyX is built is not the one where it will
- run).
-
o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
that users can run these tests manually with Edit>Reconfigure.
-Finally, you will need to have python 1.5.2 or newer installed to be
-able to import older LyX files with the lyx2lyx script (this script is
-called automatically when opening a file).
+ o Python 1.5.2 or newer installed to be able to import older LyX files
+ with the lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when
+ opening a file).
Creating the Makefile
flags:
o --with-frontend=FRONTEND that allows to specify which frontend you
- want to use. Default is "xforms", and the other possible value is
- "qt".
+ want to use. There is no default value: this switch is required.
o --with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY that specifies the path where LyX will
find extra libraries (Xpm, xforms, qt) it needs. Defaults to NONE
directories, separated by colons.
o --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY that gives the place where LyX will find
- xforms headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
+ extra headers. Defaults to NONE (i.e. search in standard places).
You can specify several directories, separated by colons.
o --with-extra-prefix[=DIRECTORY] that is equivalent to
--with-extra-lib=DIRECTORY/lib --with-extra-inc=DIRECTORY/include
If DIRECTORY is not specified, the current prefix is used.
- o --with-version-suffix will install LyX as lyx-<version>, e.g. lyx-1.3.1
- The LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyx-1.3.1/.
+ o --with-version-suffix will install LyX as lyx-<version>, e.g. lyx-1.4.1
+ The LyX data directory will be something like <whatever>/lyx-1.4.1/.
Additionally your user configuration files will be found in e.g.
- $HOME/.lyx-1.3.1
+ $HOME/.lyx-1.4.1
You can use this feature to install more than one version of LyX
on the same system. You can optionally specify a "version" of your
- own, by doing something like :
+ own, by doing something like :
./configure --with-version-suffix=-latestcvs
Note that the standard configure options --program-prefix,
optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
- o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
- requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
- debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
- for development versions and prereleases only.
-
There are also flags to control the internationalization support in
LyX:
care.
o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
- language in case ou do not want to install all the translation
+ language in case you do not want to install all the translation
files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
export LINGUAS='de fi'
o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
[defaults to ${prefix}/man]
+ o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
+ rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
+ files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
+ surprises.
+
Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
In particular, the following options could be useful in some desperate
cases:
+ o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
+ requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
+ debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
+ for development versions and prereleases only.
+
o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
this flag is on for development versions only.
is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
development versions only.
+ o --enable-stdlib-debug adds some debug code in the standard
+ library; this slows down the code, but has been helpful in the
+ past to find bugs. By default, this flag is on for development
+ versions only.
+
+ o --enable-concept-checks adds some compile-time checks. There is no
+ run-time penalty. By default, this flag is on for development
+ versions only.
+
o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
notify us.
- o If you have problems indicating that configure cannot find a part of
- the xforms or Xpm library, use the --with-extra-lib and --with-extra-inc
- options of configure to specify where these libraries reside.
-
- o Configure will seemingly fail to find xpm.h and forms.h on linux
- if the kernel headers are not available. Two cases are possible:
-
- - you have not installed the kernel sources. Then you should
- install them or at least the kernel-headers package (or
- whatever it is called in your distribution).
-
- - you have the sources, but you did a 'make mrproper' in the
- kernel directory (this this removes some symbolic links that
- are needed for compilation). A 'make symlinks' in linux kernel
- sources fixes that.
-
- o if you are using RedHat Linux 7.x, you must make sure you have the
- latest updated gcc and related packages installed (at least -85),
- or LyX will not compile or will be mis-compiled.
-
- o if you get an error message when compiling LyX that looks like this :
-
- ../../src/minibuffer.h:17: using directive `Object' introduced
- ambiguous type `_ObjectRec *'
-
- then you need to upgrade the version of the xforms library you have
- installed.
+ o On SUN Sparc Solaris 8, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
+ work with Solaris make.
- o On solaris 2.6, you may have to compile with --with-included-string
- if compiling with gcc 2.95.2.
+ The Solaris ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
+ will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
o LyX can be compiled on Tru64 Unix with either GNU's gcc or the default
Compaq cxx compiler.