[wxWidgets.git] / docs / gtk / install.txt

* The most simple case
-----------------------

If you compile wxWindows on Unix for the first time and don't like
to read install instructions just do (in the base dir):

./configure --with-gtk --with-shared --without-threads
make

and drink 10 coffees.


* General
-----------------------

The Unix variants of wxWindows use GNU configure. If you have problems 
with your make use GNU make instead.

Read my homepage at 

  http://wesley.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~wxxt
  
for newest information.

* GUI libraries
-----------------------

wxWindows requires a GUI toolkit to be installed. Does that make
sense? So far only the GTK is supported, but we hope to provide
the choice between GTK, Qt, Motif/Lesstif in the not so distant 
future.

You can get the newest version of the GTK from the GTK homepage
at
  http://www.gtk.org
  
The newest versin of Qt can be downloaded for free from the Trolltec's 
site at
  http://www.troll.no

Lesstif can be downloaded from their site
at
  http://www.lesstif.org

If you want to develop using Motif, you need to buy it, unless it comes
with your operating system such as all commercial Unices, as well as
RedHat's, SuSe's and probably other's Linux Motif editions.

* Additional libraries
-----------------------

There will be a few more features of wxWindows, which will 
require further libraries (on some platforms). These
features will be optional. I hope to teach configure
to check that out automatically.

Thread support:

  Requires pthreads under Linux with glibc 2. pthreads are
  always present on such systems, so just compile, unless
  you have RedHat 5.0, which has a broken combination of
  glibc 2 and X. In this case, you have to run configure
  with "--without-threads".
  
  Requires PCthreads under Linux with libc 5. If you
  haven't installed pcthreads, there will be no thread
  support in wxWindows, but the library will compile.
  
  Requires Posix threads on commercial Unix system,
  which are always present. Just compile.
  
  On SGI Irix we first look for sprocs, then pthreads and
  use the last one found.
  
Python scripting language support:

  Requires Python. Soon to come.
  
* Other things to do
-----------------------------

wxGTK and wxMotif/wxLesstif require the built-in
ImLib/GdkImlib to be configured. For that purpose
copy the two files from /misc/imlib to your
home directory and rename "imrc" -> ".imrc".
You may also edit imrc by hand as you like. 
The palette file is required when using
wxWindows in 256-colour mode.

If you want to use wxWindows's ODBC support, you'll have
to create a .odbc.ini file. The readme file in 
~/src/iodbc tells you what to do.


* Create your configuration
-----------------------------

Usage:
        ./configure options

If you want to use system's C and C++ compiler,
set environment variables CC and CCC as

        % setenv CC cc
        % setenv CCC CC
        % ./configure options

Using the SGI native compilers, it is recommended that you
also set CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS before running configure. These 
should be set to :

CFLAGS="-mips3 -n32" 
CXXFLAGS="-mips3 -n32"

This is essential if you want to use the resultant binaries 
on any other machine than the one it was compiled on. If you 
have a 64bit machine (Octane) you should also do this to ensure 
you don't accidently build the libraries as 64bit (which is 
untested).

The SGI native compiler support has only been tested on Irix 6.5.

to see all the options please use:

        ./configure --help

The basic philosophy is that if you want to use different
configurations, like a debug and a release version, 
or use the same source tree on different systems,
you have only to change the environment variable OSTYPE.
(Sadly this variable is not set by default on some systems
in some shells - on SGI's for example). So you will have to 
set it there. This variable HAS to be set before starting 
configure, so that it knows which system it tries to 
configure for.

Configure will complain if the system variable OSTYPE has 
not been defined. And Make in some circumstances as well...


* General options
-------------------

Obviously, you have to choose a toolkit. You must do this by
running configure with either of

        --with-gtk               Use the GIMP ToolKit (GTK)
        
        --with-qt                Use Qt from TrollTec
        
        --with-motif             Use either Motif or Lesstif
                                 Configure will look for both. 

The following options handle the kind of library you want to build.

        --without-threads       Compile without thread support.

        --with-shared           Create shared libraries.

        --without-optimise      Do not optimise the code.

        --with-profile          Add profiling info to the object 
                                files. Currently broken, I think.
                                
        --with-mem_tracing      Add built-in memory tracing. 
                                This doesn't work well with gcc.
                                
        --with-dmalloc          Use the dmalloc memory debugger.
                                Read more at www.letters.com/dmalloc/
                                
        --with-debug_info       Add debug info to object files and
                                executables.

        --with-debug_flag       Define __DEBUG__ and __WXDEBUG__ when
                                compiling.

* Feature Options
-------------------

When using the Windows version of wxWindows, it is possible
to edit the file /include/wx/msw/setup.h in order to enable
or disable some features of wxWindows so that the resulting
binaries get smaller.

As I don't yet care for binary size and target mainly at
producing a shared library, wxWindows's configure system auto-
matically enables all features, as long as they are already
implemented.

* Compiling
-------------

The following must be done in the base directory (e.g. ~/wxGTK
or ~/wxWin)

First you have to create all makefiles in all subdirectories:

        make Makefiles

Dependencies are generated automatically using

        make depend
        
(For some reason, this doesn't seem to work completely.)

Now the makefiles are created you can compile everything is as simple
as typing:

        make

make yourself some coffee, as it will try to compile
ALL the files in this distribution.

if you want to be more selective:

        make src        will build only the base libraries
        make utils      will build the utils
        make samples    will build the samples
        make other      will build the other samples
        make user       will build the files in the directory other

Depending on the configuration of some files, the libraries
and binaries will be placed in different directories.
The "global" binaries and libraries will be placed in:

        bin/$(OSTYPE) and
        lib/$(OSTYPE) respectively

"local" binaries and libraries will be placed in:

        (basedir of that application)/$(OSTYPE).

This is also the place where all the object-files will go.

If you want to conserve disk space by removing unnecessary
object-files:

         make clean_obj

will do the work for you.

* Creating a new Project
--------------------------

I propose to put all contributed programs in the directory
"~/wxWin/user", with a directory of its own.

This directory then should include the following files:

Makefile        (You can copy this one from any application in samples
                 probably you will not need to edit this one. There is
                 only one case where you might be interested in changing
                 this file, but about that see later.)
Makefile.in     (This is the base application-Makefile template, from
                 which the actual Makefile for each system is created.
                 More about this later)

put ALL your source code along with all the other stuff you need for
your application in this directory (subdirectories are welcome).

** Something about Makefiles
------------------------------

On general principle it should only contain ONE line, which is as follows:

        include ../../setup/general/makeapp

this will include all the necessary definitions for creating the applications

the only case where you might want to add another line is the following:
this version of configure also supports creation of source archives of the
application for easy distribution and updates to newer version of wxWindows.
    For this purpose all files in the application-directory will be put into
a gziped tar-file in the full notation user/<your application>/*
if you want to include some other files that you want "more visible", like
a README.<yourApp> or a shell script for easy 
compilation/installation/distribution, then you have to add a variable

        DISTRIBUTE_ADDITIONAL=<your files>

to the Makefile.
So it would look like this:

        DISTRIBUTE_ADDITIONAL=README.TheApp
        include ../../setup/general/makeapp

As we have already talked about distribution the command to create a 
distribution is:

        make distrib

NOTE: If you are in the base directory of wxWindows it will create 
distribution packages for wxWindows as well as for all packages in the
user directory.
    So if you want to create only packages for the files in user,
then go to the directory other and type:

        make distrib

or if you only want one application to be created then
enter the specific directory and type there:
make distrib

All the distribution files will be put in the directory
distrib at the base of the wxWindows-tree (where also configure
and template.mak can be found).

** Something about Makefile.in
--------------------------------

As you have already seen with Makefile, configure makes a lot of use
if the include statement in make to keep the Makefiles as simple as 
possible.

So basically there are only variables to define and then a include command.
Exception to this rule is if you have special rules for some stuff...
These rules should go AFTER the include statement!!!

so the general header looks like this:

        # wxWindows base directory
        WXBASEDIR=@WXBASEDIR@
        # set the OS type for compilation
        OS=@OS@
        # compile a library only
        RULE=bin

and the general footer will look like this:

        # include the definitions now
        include ../../../template.mak

the key variable is RULE, which defines what make should create
in this directory.

here are some examples:

  RULE    description              
  ===========================================================================
  bin     creates a local binary (for a global binary prefix bin with g)
          additional variables needed:
                BIN_TARGET      this gives the name of your application
                BIN_OBJ         this gives the object files needed to
                                link the application
          optional variables are:
                BIN_SRC         this gives the list of c/c++ files for
                                which dependencies will be checked.
                                (This can be achieved with: make depend)
                BIN_LINK        this gives commands for additional
                                libraries needed to link the application
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  bin2    creates two local binaries (for global binaries prefix bin2 with g)
          in addition to the variables specified above you MUST also
          provide the same variables with BIN2_ instead of BIN_
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  lib     creates a local library (for a global binary prefix bin with g)
          additional variables needed:
                LIB_TARGET      this gives the name of your library
                LIB_OBJ         this gives the object files needed for
                                the library to be build.
          optional variables are:
                LIB_SRC         this gives the list of c/c++ files for
                                which dependencies will be checked.
          libbin and libgbin are also possible and will need in addition
          the variables from bin
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  gslib   is similar to lib, but it creates a shared library if the system
          supports it.
          additional variables needed:
                LIB_MAJOR       major number of the shared library
                LIB_MINOR       minor number of the shared library
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
  other additional variables:

          ADD_COMPILE      define additional includes/defines that
                           are needed to compile the object files
                           (if you need to reference some directory
                           utils - like wxGrid -, then please 
                           reference them with the variables defined
                           in template.mak - e.g.: $(SRCDIR),$(UTILS),
                           $(SAMPLES),$(OTHERS))

          NEEDED_DEFINES   lists all the defines that HAVE to be set in
                           /include/wx/setup.h to compile correctly.

          SRC_DIR          lists all directories that are needed to
                           compile. (i.e: lists all the directories,
                           where there are source-files.) But it is 
                           also needed to clean an object and for 
                           machines, for which make does not support 
                           VPATH

currently there are the following compiling rules provided:
object files are created for the following file extensions:
.c .cc .cpp

Please have a closer look at the Makefiles in this distribution.

* Platforms configure is working with
---------------------------------------

Please report build succes on any machine. Especially non-
Linux operating systems (which I don't have).

Original author of the autoconf system for wxxt-1.66 and for this INSTALL
file:

        Martin Sperl    sperl@dsn.ast.univie.ac.at
        
Ported to wxGTK 0.1:

        Wolfram Gloger  wmglo@dent.med.uni-muenchen.de

Thanks alot to both of them.

In the hope that it will be useful,

        Robert Roebling roebling@sun2.ruf.uni-freiburg.de