Updated docs, distrib and version

[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
make
su <type root password>
make install
ldconfig
exit


* The most simple errors
------------------------

configure reports, that you don't have GTK 1.X installed
although you are certainly sure you have. Well, you have
installed it, but you also have another version of the
GTK installed, which you may need to removed including
other versions of glib (and its headers).

You get errors during compilation. The reason is that you
probably have a broken compiler, which includes almost
everything that is called gcc. If there is just any way
for you to use egcs, use egcs. We are sorry, but we cannot
fix gcc.

* The most simple program
-------------------------

Now create your super-application myfoo.app and compile anywhere 
with

g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs` `wx-config --cflags` -o myfoo

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

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

If you have general problems with installation, read my 
homepage at 

  http://wesley.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~wxxt
  
for newest information. If you still don't have any success,
please send a bug report to one of our mailing lists (see
my homepage) INCLUDING A DESCRIPTION OF YOUR SYSTEM AND 
YOUR PROBLEM, SUCH AS YOUR VERSION OF GTK, WXGTK, WHAT
DISTRIBUTION YOU USE AND WHAT ERROR WAS REPORTED. I know 
this has no effect, but I tried...

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

wxWindows/GTK requires the GTK+ library to be installed on your system.
It has to be a stable version, preferebly version 1.2.1. You can use
GTK 1.0.X in connection with wxWindows, but we don't support Drag'n'Drop
for GTK 1.0.X so you have to "configure --without-dnd". wxWindows does 
NOT work with the 1.1.X versions of the GTK+ library.

You can get the newest version of the GTK+ from the GTK homepage
at
  http://www.gtk.org
  
We also mirror GTK+ 1.2.1 at my ftp site soon. You'll find information
about downloading at my homepage.
  
* Additional libraries
-----------------------

wxWindows/Gtk requires a thread library and X libraries
known to work with threads. This is the case on all
commercial Unix-Variants and all Linux-Versions that
are based on glibc 2 except RedHat 5.0 which is broken
in many aspects. As of writing this, these Linux 
distributions have correct glibc 2 support:

 - RedHat 5.1
 - Debian 2.0
 - Stampede
 - DLD 6.0
 - SuSE 6.0
 
You can enable thread support by running 

./configure "--with-threads"
make clean
make
su <type root password>
make install
ldconfig
exit
  
NB: DO NOT COMPILE WXGTK WITH GCC AND THREADS, SINCE
ALL PROGRAMS WILL CRASH UPON START-UP! Just always
use egcs and be happy.

* 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
-------------------

Normally, you won't have to choose a toolkit, because when
you download wxGTK, it will default to --with-gtk etc. But
if you use all of our CVS repository you have to choose a 
toolkit. You must do this by running configure with either of:

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

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

        --with-threads          Compile with thread support. Threads
                                support is also required for the
                                socket code to work.

        --without-shared        Do not create shared libraries.

        --without-optimise      Do not optimise the code. Can
                                sometimes be useful for debugging
                                and is required on some architectures
                                such as Sun with gcc 2.8.X which
                                would otherwise produce segvs.

        --with-profile          Add profiling info to the object 
                                files. Currently broken, I think.
                                
        --with-mem_tracing      Add built-in memory tracing. 
                                
        --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 for use with debuggers
                                such as gdb (or its many frontends).

        --with-debug_flag       Define __DEBUG__ and __WXDEBUG__ when
                                compiling. This enable wxWindows' very
                                useful internal debugging tricks (such
                                as automatically reporting illegal calls)
                                to work. Note that program and library
                                must be compiled with the same debug 
                                options.

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

When producing an executable that is linked statically with wxGTK
you'll be surprised at its immense size. This can sometimes be
drastically reduced by removing features from wxWindows that 
are not used in your program. The most relevant such features
are

        --without-libpng        Disables PNG image format code.
        
        --without-libjpeg       Disables JPEG image format code.
        
        --without-odbc          Disables ODBC code.
        
        --without-wxresources   Disables the use of *.wxr type
                                resources.
                
        --without-threads       Disables threads.

        --without-sockets       Disables sockets.

        --without-dnd           Disables Drag'n'Drop.
        
        --without-clipboard     Disables Clipboard.
        
        --without-serial        Disables object instance serialiasation.
        
        --without-streams       Disables the wxStream classes.
        
Apart from disabling certain features you can very often "strip"
the program of its debugging information resulting in a significant
reduction in size.

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

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

Now the makefiles are created (by configure) and you can compile 
the library by typing:

        make

make yourself some coffee, as it will take some time. On an old
386SX possibly week. During compilation, you'll get a few 
warning messages depending in your compiler.

if you want to be more selective:

        make            will build only the base libraries
        make samples    will build the samples
        make user       will build everything in user

Then you may install the library and it's header files under
/usr/local/include/wx and /usr/local/lib respectively. You
have to log in as root (i.e. run "su" and enter the root
password) and type

        make install    
        
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.
(Currently there arent any global binaries).

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

         make clean

in the various directories will do the work for you.

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

There are two ways to create your own project:

1) The first way uses the installed libraries and header files
automatically using wx-config

g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs` `wx-config --cflags` -o myfoo

Using this way, a make file for the minimal sample would look
like this

CC = g++

minimal: minimal.o
    $(CC) -o minimal minimal.o `wx-config --libs` 

minimal.o: minimal.cpp mondrian.xpm
    $(CC) `wx-config --cflags` -c minimal.cpp -o minimal.o

clean: 
        rm -f *.o minimal

This is certain to become the standard way unless we decide
to sitch to tmake.

2) The other way creates a project within the source code 
directories of wxWindows: In this case I propose to put 
all contributed programs in the directory "/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