4 Xapian's build system is built using GNU autoconf, automake, and libtool.
5 If you've installed other Open Source projects from source, you should
6 find yourself in familiar territory. Building and installing involves
7 the following 3 simple steps:
9 1) Run "./configure", possibly with some extra arguments (see below)
10 2) Run "make" to build Xapian
11 3) Run "make install" to install Xapian
16 You'll need to have zlib installed (http://www.zlib.net/) before you can build
17 Xapian. The zlib library is very widely used, so you'll probably have it
18 installed already if you're using Linux, FreeBSD, or similar, but you may need
19 to install a "zlib development" package to get the zlib library headers.
21 We recommend using zlib 1.2.x as it apparently fixes a memory leak in
22 deflateInit2 (which Xapian uses) and decompression is supposed to be about 20%
23 faster than with 1.1.x, but it's pretty unlikely you'll have an older version
26 Xapian 1.1.0 and higher also requires a library which can generate UUIDs.
27 On FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Microsoft Windows, Xapian makes use of built-in UUID
28 APIs. On other platforms, you need to install libuuid which you can find in
29 util-linux-ng (http://userweb.kernel.org/~kzak/util-linux-ng/). On Debian and
30 Ubuntu, the package to install is uuid-dev, while on Fedora, it is
31 libuuid-devel (on older Fedora versions you instead need e2fsprogs-devel).
36 We aim to support compilation with any C++ compiler which conforms to ISO
37 C++11, or a reasonable approximation to it.
39 If you're using MS Visual C++, see the Xapian download page for a link to
40 a set of suitable makefiles: https://xapian.org/download
42 If you're using GCC, we currently recommend GCC 4.7 or newer (this is the
43 oldest version we regularly test with).
45 The current hard minimum requirement is also GCC 4.7 (due to requiring good
46 support for C++11, for example non-static data member initializers aren't
47 supported by earlier versions).
49 If you really still need to use an older version of GCC, Xapian 1.2.x doesn't
50 require C++11 support and should build with older versions - probably as far
53 When using HP's aCC, Xapian must be compiled with +std=c++11, which
54 xapian-core's configure automatically detects and passes. You don't have to
55 pass this option when building code which uses Xapian, but you can.
60 When using GCC on platforms which support multiple architecture, the simplest
61 way to select a non-default architecture is to pass a CXX setting to configure
62 which includes the appropriate -m option - e.g. to build for x86 on x86-64
63 you would configure with:
65 ./configure CXX='g++ -m32'
67 Building in a separate directory
68 ================================
70 If you wish to perform your build in a separate directory from the source,
71 create and change to the build directory, and run the configure script (in
72 the source directory) from the build directory, like so:
78 Options to give to configure
79 ============================
82 You should use this to build a version of Xapian with many internal
83 consistency checks. This will run more slowly, but is useful if you
84 suspect a bug in Xapian.
86 --enable-backend-chert
87 --enable-backend-glass
88 --enable-backend-inmemory
89 --enable-backend-remote
90 These options enable (or disable if --disable-backend-XXX is specified)
91 the compiling of each backend (database access methods). By default,
92 all backends for which the appropriate libraries and OS support are
93 available will be enabled. Note: Currently disabling the remote
94 backend also disables replication (because the network code is shared).
99 When compiling with GCC, by default Xapian will be built with _FORTIFY_SOURCE
100 set to 2. This enables some compile time and runtime checking of values passed
101 to library functions when building with GCC >= 4.1 and glibc >= 2.34 (some
102 Linux distros may have backported support to older GCC and/or glibc). If you
103 wish to disable this for any reason, you can just configure like so:
105 ./configure CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=0
107 Or you can set the "fortification level" to 1 instead of 2:
109 ./configure CPPFLAGS=-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=1
111 If you're disabling it because it causes problems, please also report this to
112 us (via the bug tracker or mailing lists).
117 When compiling with GCC and using a sufficiently new version of ld, configure
118 we automatically cause -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions to be used when linking the
119 library. This causes all references from inside the library to symbols inside
120 the library to be resolved when the library is created, rather than when the
121 shared library is loaded, which decreases the time taken to load the library,
122 reduces its size, and is also likely to make the code run a little faster.
124 Should you wish to disable this for some reason, you can configure like so
125 which disables the probe for -Bsymbolic-functions so it won't ever be used:
127 ./configure xo_cv_symbolic_functions=no
129 If you're disabling it because it causes problems, please also report this to
130 us (via the bug tracker or mailing lists).
135 When compiling with GCC >= 4.0 for platforms which support symbol visibility,
136 we automatically pass -fvisibility=hidden to g++ when building the library, and
137 mark classes, methods, and functions which need exporting with attributes to
140 Should you wish to disable this for some reason, you can configure like so:
142 ./configure --disable-visibility
144 If you're disabling it because it causes problems, please also report this to
145 us (via the bug tracker or mailing lists).
150 There are additional scripts and configure options to help people doing
151 development work on Xapian itself, and people who are building from git.
152 Read HACKING to find out about them.