1 wxWidgets for Motif installation
2 --------------------------------
6 If you experience problems installing, please re-read these
7 instructions and other related files (todo.txt, bugs.txt and
8 osname.txt for your platform if it exists) carefully before
9 mailing wx-users or the author. Preferably, try to fix the
10 problem first and then send a patch to the author.
12 When sending bug reports tell us what version of wxWidgets you are
13 using (including the beta) and what compiler on what system. One
14 example: wxMotif 2.8.1, gcc 2.95.4, Redhat 6.1
19 - Prerequisites: Motif 1.2 or above, or Lesstif. Motif 2.0 and
20 above may also be suitable.
22 - Download wxX11-x.y.z.tgz, where x.y.z is the version number.
23 (wxMotif is included in the wxX11 distribution).
24 Download documentation in a preferred format, such as
25 wxWidgets-HTML.zip or wxWidgets-PDF.zip.
27 - Make a directory such as ~/wx and unarchive the files into this
30 - It is recommended that you install bison and flex; using yacc
31 and lex may require tweaking of the makefiles. You also need
32 libXpm (see comments in the Notes section below) if you want to have
33 XPM support in wxWidgets (recommended).
35 - You can now use configure to build wxWidgets and the samples.
37 Using configure is the only way to build the library. If it doesn't
38 work for you for whatever reason, please report it (together with detailed
39 information about your platform and the (relevant part of) contents of
40 config.log file) to wx-dev@lists.wxwindows.org.
43 COMPILING USING CONFIGURE
44 =========================
49 If you compile wxWidgets on Linux for the first time and don't like to read
50 install instructions just do (in the base dir):
52 > ./configure --with-motif
54 > su <type root password>
59 Afterwards you can continue with
62 > su <type root password>
67 If you want to remove wxWidgets on Unix you can do this:
69 > su <type root password>
77 If you want to do some more serious cross-platform programming with wxWidgets,
78 such as for GTK and Motif, you can now build two complete libraries and use
79 them concurrently. For this end, you have to create a directory for each build
80 of wxWidgets - you may also want to create different versions of wxWidgets
81 and test them concurrently. Most typically, this would be a version configured
82 with --enable-debug and one without.
84 For building three versions (one GTK, one Motif and a debug version of the GTK
85 source) you'd do this:
89 ../configure --with-motif
95 ../configure --with-gtk
101 ../configure --with-gtk --enable-debug
105 Note that since wxWidgets-2.6.0 you can install all those libraries
106 concurrently, you just need to pass the appropriate flags when using them.
108 * The simplest errors
109 ---------------------
111 You get errors during compilation: The reason is that you probably have a
112 broken compiler. GCC 2.8 and earlier versions and egcs are likely to cause
113 problems due to incomplete support for C++ and optimisation bugs. Best to use
116 You get immediate segfault when starting any sample or application: This is
117 either due to having compiled the library with different flags or options than
118 your program - typically you might have the __WXDEBUG__ option set for the
119 library but not for your program - or due to using a compiler with optimisation
122 * The simplest program
123 ----------------------
125 Now create your super-application myfoo.app and compile anywhere with
127 g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs --cxxflags` -o myfoo
132 The Unix variants of wxWidgets use GNU configure. If you have problems with
133 your make use GNU make instead.
135 If you have general problems with installation, see the wxWidgets website at
137 http://www.wxwidgets.org/
139 for newest information. If you still don't have any success, please send a bug
140 report to one of our mailing lists (see my homepage) INCLUDING A DESCRIPTION OF
141 YOUR SYSTEM AND YOUR PROBLEM, SUCH AS YOUR VERSION OF MOTIF, WXMOTIF, WHAT
142 DISTRIBUTION YOU USE AND WHAT ERROR WAS REPORTED. I know this has no effect,
148 wxWidgets/Motif requires the Motif library to be installed on your system. As
149 an alternative, you may also use the free library "lesstif" which implements
150 most of the Motif API without the licence restrictions of Motif.
152 You can get the newest version of the Lesstif from the lesstif homepage at:
154 http://www.lesstif.org/
156 * Additional libraries
157 ----------------------
159 wxWidgets/Motif requires a thread library and X libraries known to work with
160 threads. This is the case on all commercial Unix-Variants and all
161 Linux-Versions that are based on glibc 2 except RedHat 5.0 which is broken in
162 many aspects. As of writing this, virtually all Linux distributions have
163 correct glibc 2 support.
165 You can disable thread support by running
167 ./configure --disable-threads
169 su <type root password>
174 * Building wxMotif on OS/2
175 --------------------------
177 Please send comments and question about the OS/2 installation
178 to Stefan Neis <Stefan.Neis@t-online.de> and patches to
179 the wxWidgets mailing list.
181 In the following list, the version numbers indicate the configuration that
182 was actually used by myself, newer version should cause no problems and
183 even older ones are expected to work most of the time.
185 You'll need OS/2 Warp (4.51) or eCS(1.0), X-Free86/2 (3.3.6 or newer),
186 Lesstif (0.92.7 or newer), emx (0.9d fix 4), a Unix like shell (pdksh-5.2.14
187 or ash), Autoconf (2.57), GNU file utilities (3.13), GNU text utilities (1.19),
188 GNU shell utilites (1.12), m4 (1.4), sed (2.05), grep (2.0), Awk (3.0.3),
191 Preferably, you should have Posix/2 installed and C(PLUS)_INCLUDE_PATH and
192 LIBRARY_PATH set up accordingly, however, wxGTK will even work without it.
193 Presence of Posix/2 will be auto-detected.
195 Open an OS/2 prompt and switch to the directory above.
196 Set MAKESHELL or MAKE_SHELL (which one is needed depends on the version of
197 make) to a Unix like shell, e.g.
199 If you have a really deficient version of GNU make, it might even be
200 necessary to set SHELL or even COMSPEC to a unix like shell as well.
201 Depending on your installation you might want to also set INSTALL, for me
202 it tends to try to use the system's tcpip\pcomos\install.exe which causes
204 SET INSTALL=<path_to_src_directory>/install-sh -c
206 Notice that the delivered configure scripts are fully OS/2 aware, so you
208 ash -c "configure --with-motif"
209 and make and possibly make install as described above.
211 To verify Lesstif installation, configure will try to compile a
212 sample program that requires X headers/libraries to be either
213 available via C_INCLUDE_PATH and LIBRARY_PATH or you need to
214 explicitly set CFLAGS prior to running configure.
216 * Building wxMotif on SGI
217 -------------------------
219 Using the SGI native compilers, it is recommended that you
220 also set CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS before running configure. These
224 CXXFLAGS="-mips3 -n32"
226 This is essential if you want to use the resultant binaries
227 on any other machine than the one it was compiled on. If you
228 have a 64bit machine (Octane) you should also do this to ensure
229 you don't accidently build the libraries as 64bit (which is
232 The SGI native compiler support has only been tested on Irix 6.5.
234 * Building wxMotif on Cygwin
235 ----------------------------
237 The normal build instructions should work fine on Cygwin. The one difference
238 with Cygwin is that when using the "--enable-shared" configure option (which
239 is the default) the API is exported explicitly using __declspec(dllexport)
240 rather than all global symbols being available.
242 This shouldn't make a difference using the library and should be a little
243 more efficient. However if an export attribute has been missed somewhere you
244 will see linking errors. If this happens then you can work around the
245 problem by setting LDFLAGS=-Wl,--export-all-symbols. Please also let us know
246 about it on the wx-dev mailing list.
248 * Create your configuration
249 ---------------------------
252 ./configure [options]
254 If you want to use system's C and C++ compiler,
255 set environment variables CXX and CC as
259 % ./configure options
261 to see all the options please use:
265 The basic philosophy is that if you want to use different
266 configurations, like a debug and a release version,
267 or use the same source tree on different systems,
268 you have only to change the environment variable OSTYPE.
269 (Sadly this variable is not set by default on some systems
270 in some shells - on SGI's for example). So you will have to
271 set it there. This variable HAS to be set before starting
272 configure, so that it knows which system it tries to
275 Configure will complain if the system variable OSTYPE has
276 not been defined. And Make in some circumstances as well...
282 Given below are the commands to change the default behaviour,
283 i.e. if it says "--disable-threads" it means that threads
284 are enabled by default.
286 Many of the configure options have been thoroughly tested
287 in wxWidgets snapshot 6, but not yet all (ODBC not).
289 You have to add --with-motif on platforms, where Motif is
290 not the default (on Linux, configure will default to GTK).
292 --with-motif Use either Motif or Lesstif
293 Configure will look for both.
295 The following options handle the kind of library you want to build.
297 --disable-threads Compile without thread support. Threads
298 support is also required for the
301 --disable-shared Do not create shared libraries.
303 --enable-monolithic Build wxWidgets as single library instead
304 of as several smaller libraries (which is
305 the default since wxWidgets 2.5.0).
307 --disable-optimise Do not optimise the code. Can
308 sometimes be useful for debugging
309 and is required on some architectures
310 such as Sun with gcc 2.8.X which
311 would otherwise produce segvs.
313 --enable-profile Add profiling info to the object
314 files. Currently broken, I think.
316 --enable-no_rtti Enable compilation without creation of
317 C++ RTTI information in object files.
318 This will speed-up compilation and reduce
321 --enable-no_exceptions Enable compilation without creation of
322 C++ exception information in object files.
323 This will speed-up compilation and reduce
324 binary size. Also fewer crashes during the
325 actual compilation...
327 --enable-no_deps Enable compilation without creation of
328 dependency information.
330 --enable-permissive Enable compilation without checking for strict
331 ANSI conformance. Useful to prevent the build
332 dying with errors as soon as you compile with
333 Solaris' ANSI-defying headers.
335 --enable-mem_tracing Add built-in memory tracing.
337 --enable-dmalloc Use the dmalloc memory debugger.
338 Read more at www.letters.com/dmalloc/
340 --enable-debug Equivalent to --enable-debug_info plus
343 --enable-debug_info Add debug info to object files and
344 executables for use with debuggers
345 such as gdb (or its many frontends).
347 --enable-debug_flag Define __DEBUG__ and __WXDEBUG__ when
348 compiling. This enable wxWidgets' very
349 useful internal debugging tricks (such
350 as automatically reporting illegal calls)
351 to work. Note that program and library
352 must be compiled with the same debug
358 Many of the configure options have been thoroughly tested
359 in wxWidgets snapshot 6, but not yet all (ODBC not).
361 When producing an executable that is linked statically with wxGTK
362 you'll be surprised at its immense size. This can sometimes be
363 drastically reduced by removing features from wxWidgets that
364 are not used in your program. The most relevant such features
367 --without-libpng Disables PNG image format code.
369 --without-libjpeg Disables JPEG image format code.
371 --without-odbc Disables ODBC code.
373 --without-libtiff Disables TIFF image format code.
375 --without-expat Disable XML classes based on Expat parser.
377 --disable-threads Disables threads. Will also
380 --disable-sockets Disables sockets.
382 --disable-dnd Disables Drag'n'Drop.
384 --disable-clipboard Disables Clipboard.
386 --disable-streams Disables the wxStream classes.
388 --disable-file Disables the wxFile class.
390 --disable-textfile Disables the wxTextFile class.
392 --disable-intl Disables the internationalisation.
394 --disable-validators Disables validators.
396 --disable-accel Disables accel.
398 Apart from disabling certain features you can very often "strip"
399 the program of its debugging information resulting in a significant
402 Please see the output of "./configure --help" for comprehensive list
403 of all configurable options.
409 The following must be done in the base directory (e.g. ~/wxMotif
410 or ~/wxWin or whatever)
412 Now the makefiles are created (by configure) and you can compile
413 the library by typing:
417 make yourself some coffee, as it will take some time. On an old
418 Pentium 200 around 40 minutes. During compilation, you may get a few
419 warning messages depending in your compiler.
421 If you want to be more selective, you can change into a specific
422 directory and type "make" there.
424 Then you may install the library and its header files under
425 /usr/local/include/wx and /usr/local/lib respectively. You
426 have to log in as root (i.e. run "su" and enter the root
431 You can remove any traces of wxWidgets by typing
435 If you want to save disk space by removing unnecessary
440 in the various directories will do the work for you.
442 * Creating a new Project
443 ------------------------
445 1) The first way uses the installed libraries and header files
446 automatically using wx-config
448 g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs` `wx-config --cxxflags` -o myfoo
450 Using this way, a make file for the minimal sample would look
456 $(CXX) -o minimal minimal.o `wx-config --libs`
458 minimal.o: minimal.cpp mondrian.xpm
459 $(CXX) `wx-config --cxxflags` -c minimal.cpp -o minimal.o
464 This is certain to become the standard way unless we decide
467 If your application uses only some of wxWidgets libraries, you can
468 specify required libraries when running wx-config. For example,
469 `wx-config --libs=html,core` will only output link command to link
470 with libraries required by core GUI classes and wxHTML classes. See
471 the manual for more information on the libraries.
473 2) The other way creates a project within the source code
474 directories of wxWidgets. For this endeavour, you'll need
475 GNU autoconf version 2.14 and add an entry to your Makefile.in
476 to the bottom of the configure.in script and run autoconf
477 and configure before you can type make.
479 * Further notes by Julian Smart
480 ---------------------------------
482 - You may find the following script useful for compiling wxMotif,
483 especially if installing from zips (which don't preserve file
484 permissions). Make this script executable with the command
485 chmod a+x makewxmotif.
487 -------:x-----Cut here-----:x-----
489 # Sets permissions (in case we extracted wxMotif from zip files)
491 # Call from top-level wxWidgets directory.
492 # Note that this uses standard (but commonly-used) configure options;
493 # if you're feeling brave, you may wish to compile with threads:
494 # if they're not supported by the target platform, they will be disabled
497 chmod a+x configure config.sub config.guess
498 ./configure --with-shared --with-motif --with-debug_flag --with-debug_info --enable-debug --without-threads --without-sockets --without-odbc
500 -------:x-----Cut here-----:x-----
502 This script will build wxMotif using shared libraries. If you want to build
503 a static wxWidgets library, use --disable-shared.
508 - Solaris compilation with gcc: if the compiler has problems with the variable
509 argument functions, try putting the gcc fixinclude file paths early in the
512 - If you operator-related compile errors or strange memory problems
513 (for example in deletion of string arrays), set wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS
514 and wxUSE_MEMORY_TRACING to 0 in setup.h, and recompile.
516 - If you get an internal compiler error in gcc, turn off optimisations.
518 - Problems with XtDestroyWidget crashing in ~wxWindow have been
519 reported on SGI IRIX 6.4. This has not yet been resolved, so
520 any advice here would be very welcome. See bugs.txt for a
521 possible temporary workaround (comment out the final
522 XtDestroyWidget from ~wxWindow in window.cpp).
524 - Some compilers, such as Sun C++, may give a lot of warnings about
525 virtual functions being hidden. Please ignore these, it's correct C++ syntax.
526 If you find any incorrect instances, though, such as a
527 missing 'const' in an overridden function, please let us know.
532 - Using configure will create a release build of the library by
533 default: it's recommended to use --enable-debug configure switch
534 while developing your application. To compile in non-debug mode, use
535 --disable-debug configure switch.
540 Please send bug reports with a description of your environment,
541 compiler and the error message(s) to the wxwin-developers mailing list at:
543 wx-dev@lists.wxwindows.org
545 Julian Smart, Robert Roebling and Vadim Zeitlin, November 1999.