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.
17 See Note below if ./configure script is not present.
23 runs the program so you can check it out.
26 will install it. You can use "make install-strip" instead
27 if you want a smaller binary.
30 Note for Subversion (SVN) checkouts
31 -----------------------------
33 If you have checked this out from Subversion, you need to have:
37 Then type "./autogen.sh" to build the needed configuration
38 files and proceed as stated below.
40 You will also probably need GNU m4 (perhaps installed as gm4).
45 First of all, you will also need a recent C++ compiler, where recent
46 means that the compilers are close to C++ standard conforming (gcc 3.x).
48 LyX 1.6.x makes great use of C++ Standard Template Library (STL).
49 This means that gcc users will have to install the relevant libstdc++
50 library to be able to compile this version of LyX.
52 LyX has been tested with Qt 4.2/3/4.x. For compilation you need to compile
53 against at least Qt 4.2.2. The only special point to make is that you must
54 ensure that both LyX and the Qt libraries are compiled with the same C++
57 Note that if Qt is using Xft2/fontconfig, you may need to install the
58 latex-xft-fonts package (at ftp://ftp.lyx.org/pub/lyx/contrib/) to get
59 maths symbols displayed properly. To find out, type:
61 ldd `which lyx` | grep fontconfig
63 at the console. Most recent distributions are known to use fontconfig.
65 If, however, your version of Qt does not use fontconfig, then TeX
66 fonts should be added to the font path. 'man xset' is your friend.
68 * Other things to note
70 If you make modifications to files in src/ (for example by applying a
71 patch), you will need to have the GNU gettext package installed, due
72 to some dependencies in the makefiles. You can get the latest version
74 ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gettext/
76 To use the thesaurus, you will need to install libAikSaurus, available
78 http://aiksaurus.sourceforge.net/
80 The two following programs should be available at configuration time:
82 o LaTeX2e should be correctly setup for the user you are logged in
83 as. Otherwise, LyX will not be able to run a number of tests. Note
84 that users can run these tests manually with Tools>Reconfigure.
86 o Python 2.3 or newer installed to be able to import older LyX files
87 with the lyx2lyx script (this script is called automatically when
94 LyX can be configured using GNU autoconf utility which attempts to guess
95 the configuration needed to suit your system. The standard way to use it
96 is described in the file INSTALL.autoconf. In most cases you will be able
97 to create the Makefile by typing
101 For more complicated cases, LyX configure takes the following specific
104 o --enable-build-type=[rel(ease), dev(elopment), pre(release)]
105 allows to tweak the compiled code. The following table describes
106 the settings in terms of various options that are described later
108 release prerelease development
109 optimization -O2 -O2 -O
116 The default are as follows in terms of version number
117 release: stable release (1.x.y)
118 prerelease: version number contains alpha, beta, rc or pre.
119 development: version number contains svn.
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=-latestsvn
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 a somewhat smaller code.
156 o --with-included-gettext forces the use of the included GNU gettext
157 library, although you might have another one installed.
159 o --with-catgets allows to use the catget() functions which can
160 exist on your system. This can cause problems, though. Use with
163 o You can also set the environment variable LINGUAS to a list of
164 language in case you do not want to install all the translation
165 files. For example, if you are only interested in German and
166 Finnish, you can type (with sh or bash)
167 export LINGUAS='de fi'
168 before running configure.
170 Moreover, the following generic configure flags may be useful:
172 o --prefix=DIRECTORY specifies the root directory to use for
173 installation. [defaults to /usr/local]
175 o --datadir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where all extra LyX
176 files (documentation, templates and layout definitions)
178 [defaults to ${prefix}/share/lyx${program_suffix}]
180 o --bindir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the lyx binary
181 will be installed. [defaults to ${prefix}/bin]
183 o --mandir=DIRECTORY gives the directory where the man pages will go.
184 [defaults to ${prefix}/man]
186 o --enable-maintainer-mode enables some code that automatically
187 rebuilds the configure script, makefiles templates and other useful
188 files when needed. This is off by default on releases, to avoid
191 Note that the --with-extra-* commands are not really robust when it
192 comes to use of relative paths. If you really want to use a relative path
193 here, you can prepend it with "`pwd`/".
195 If you do not like the default compile flags used (-g -O2 on gcc), you can
196 set CXXFLAGS variable to other values as follows:
198 o CXXFLAGS='-O2' (sh, bash)
199 o setenv CXXFLAGS '-O2' (csh, tcsh)
201 Similarly, if you want to force the use of some specific compiler, you can
202 give a value to the CXX variable.
204 If you encounter problems, please read the section 'Problems' at the end of
207 The following options allow to tweak more precisely the generated code:
209 o --enable-profiling instruments the code for use with the gprof
210 profiler. The result are only meaningful in conjunction with
211 --enable-build-type=release.
213 o --enable-optimization=VALUE enables you to set optimization to a
214 higher level as the default (-O), for example --enable-optimization=-O3.
216 o --disable-optimization - you can use this to disable compiler
217 optimization of LyX. The compile may be much quicker with some
218 compilers, but LyX will run more slowly.
220 o --enable-debug will add debug information to your binary. This
221 requires a lot more disk space, but is a must if you want to try to
222 debug problems in LyX. The default is to have debug information
223 for development versions and prereleases only.
225 o --enable-warnings that make the compiler output more warnings during
226 the compilation of LyX. Opposite is --disable-warnings. By default,
227 this flag is on for development versions only.
229 o --enable-assertions that make the compiler generate run-time
230 code which checks that some variables have sane values. Opposite
231 is --disable-assertions. By default, this flag is on for
232 development versions only.
234 o --enable-stdlib-debug adds some debug code in the standard
235 library; this slows down the code, but has been helpful in the
236 past to find bugs. By default, this flag is on for development
239 o --enable-concept-checks adds some compile-time checks. There is no
240 run-time penalty. By default, this flag is on for development
243 o --without-latex-config that disables the automatic detection of your
244 latex configuration. This detection is automatically disabled if
245 latex cannot be found. If you find that you have to use this
246 flag, please report it as a bug.
248 o --with-frontend=FRONTEND that allows to specify which frontend you
249 want to use. The default value is qt4, which is the only available
252 o --enable-monolithic-[boost,client,insets,mathed,core,tex2lyx,frontend-qt4]
253 that enable monolithic build of the given part of the source code. This
254 should reduce the compilation time provided you have enough memory
258 Compiling and installing LyX
259 ----------------------------
261 Once you've got the Makefile created, you just have to type:
268 Since the binaries with debug information tend to be huge (although
269 this does not affect the run-time memory footprint), you might want
270 to strip the lyx binary. In this case replace "make install" with
274 BTW: in the images subdirectory there is also a small icon "lyx.png",
275 that can be used to display lyx-documents in filemanagers.
277 If configure fails for some strange reason
278 ------------------------------------------
280 Even when configure fails, it creates a Makefile. You always can check
281 the contents of this file, modify it and run 'make'.
283 Compiling For Multiple Architectures
284 ------------------------------------
286 You can compile LyX for more than one kind of computer at the same
287 time, by placing the object files for each architecture in their own
288 directory. To do this, you must use a version of `make' that supports
289 the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. `cd' to the directory where
290 you want the object files and executables to go and run the
291 `configure' script. `configure' automatically checks for the source
292 code in the directory that `configure' is in and in `..'.
294 If you have to use a `make' that does not supports the `VPATH'
295 variable, you have to compile LyX for one architecture at a time in
296 the source code directory. After you have installed LyX for one
297 architecture, use `make distclean' before reconfiguring for another
303 This section provides several hints that have been submitted by LyX
304 team member or users to help compiling on some particular
305 architectures. If you find that some of this hints are wrong, please
308 o On SUN Sparc Solaris, you need gnumake. The LyX makefiles do not
309 work with Solaris make.
311 The Solaris 8 ar seg-faults trying to build the insets library. You
312 will need to use the ar from the GNU binutils for this subdirectory.
313 There is no problem with the Solaris 9 and 10 ar.
315 Qt4 uses the Xrender X11 extension for antialiased fonts. This
316 extension was added to Xsun starting from the Solaris 10 8/07
317 release, but it is not activated by default. To activate it, you
318 must issue (as root) the following command:
319 svccfg -s svc:/application/x11/x11-server setprop options/server_args=+xrender
320 and then restart the X server.
322 There is a problem with the fontconfig library shipped with
323 Solaris 10 8/07 causing a seg-fault when it is used by Qt4.
324 Until this is fixed, a workaround is replacing the shared library
325 /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 with a copy from a previous release or
326 installing a new version of fontconfig from http://www.sunfreeware.com/
328 On Solaris, the default fontconfig configuration gives preference
329 to bitmap fonts at (not so small) sizes. As bitmapped fonts are not
330 antialiased, you may prefer changing this configuration. This may be
331 done by adding the following stanza
333 <match target="pattern">
334 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">
339 to either ~/.fonts.conf (for a per-user change) or /etc/fonts/local.conf
340 (for a global system change). The stanza should be added between the
341 <fontconfig> and </fontconfig> tags. If neither ~/.fonts.conf nor
342 /etc/fonts/local.conf exist, you can create them with the following
345 <?xml version="1.0"?>
346 <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
348 <match target="pattern">
349 <edit name="prefer_bitmap">