1 wxWidgets 2.6.1 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 2.6.1, 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. Note, that only one build can
83 currently be installed, so you'd have to use local version of the library for
84 that purpose. For building three versions (one GTK, one Motif and a debug
85 version of the GTK source) you'd do this:
89 ../configure --with-motif
95 ../configure --with-gtk
101 ../configure --with-gtk --enable-debug
105 * The simplest errors
106 ---------------------
108 You get errors during compilation: The reason is that you probably have a
109 broken compiler. GCC 2.8 and earlier versions and egcs are likely to cause
110 problems due to incomplete support for C++ and optimisation bugs. Best to use
113 You get immediate segfault when starting any sample or application: This is
114 either due to having compiled the library with different flags or options than
115 your program - typically you might have the __WXDEBUG__ option set for the
116 library but not for your program - or due to using a compiler with optimisation
119 * The simplest program
120 ----------------------
122 Now create your super-application myfoo.app and compile anywhere with
124 g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs --cxxflags` -o myfoo
129 The Unix variants of wxWidgets use GNU configure. If you have problems with
130 your make use GNU make instead.
132 If you have general problems with installation, see the wxWidgets website at
134 http://www.wxwidgets.org/
136 for newest information. If you still don't have any success, please send a bug
137 report to one of our mailing lists (see my homepage) INCLUDING A DESCRIPTION OF
138 YOUR SYSTEM AND YOUR PROBLEM, SUCH AS YOUR VERSION OF MOTIF, WXMOTIF, WHAT
139 DISTRIBUTION YOU USE AND WHAT ERROR WAS REPORTED. I know this has no effect,
145 wxWidgets/Motif requires the Motif library to be installed on your system. As
146 an alternative, you may also use the free library "lesstif" which implements
147 most of the Motif API without the licence restrictions of Motif.
149 You can get the newest version of the Lesstif from the lesstif homepage at:
151 http://www.lesstif.org/
153 * Additional libraries
154 ----------------------
156 wxWidgets/Motif requires a thread library and X libraries known to work with
157 threads. This is the case on all commercial Unix-Variants and all
158 Linux-Versions that are based on glibc 2 except RedHat 5.0 which is broken in
159 many aspects. As of writing this, virtually all Linux distributions have
160 correct glibc 2 support.
162 You can disable thread support by running
164 ./configure --disable-threads
166 su <type root password>
171 * Building wxMotif on OS/2
172 --------------------------
174 Please send comments and question about the OS/2 installation
175 to Stefan Neis <Stefan.Neis@t-online.de> and patches to
176 the wxWidgets mailing list.
178 In the following list, the version numbers indicate the configuration that
179 was actually used by myself, newer version should cause no problems and
180 even older ones are expected to work most of the time.
182 You'll need OS/2 Warp (4.51) or eCS(1.0), X-Free86/2 (3.3.6 or newer),
183 Lesstif (0.92.7 or newer), emx (0.9d fix 4), flex (2.5.4), yacc (1.8) or
184 bison (1.25), a Unix like shell (pdksh-5.2.14 or ash), Autoconf (2.57),
185 GNU file utilities (3.13), GNU text utilities (1.19),
186 GNU shell utilites (1.12), m4 (1.4), sed (2.05), grep (2.0), Awk (3.0.3),
189 Preferably, you should have Posix/2 installed and C(PLUS)_INCLUDE_PATH and
190 LIBRARY_PATH set up accordingly, however, wxGTK will even work without it.
191 Presence of Posix/2 will be auto-detected.
193 Open an OS/2 prompt and switch to the directory above.
194 Set MAKESHELL (and depending on your installation also INSTALL, for me
195 it tends to try to use the system's tcpip\pcomos\install.exe which causes
196 problems...) to a Unix like shell, e.g.
199 Be warned that depending on the precise version of your make, the
200 variable that needs to be set might be MAKE_SHELL instead of MAKESHELL.
201 If you have a really deficient version of GNU make, it might even be
202 necessary to set SHELL or even COMSPEC to a unix like shell as well.
204 Notice that the delivered configure scripts are fully OS/2 aware, so you
206 ash -c "configure --with-motif"
207 and make and possibly make install as described above.
209 To verify Lesstif installation, configure will try to compile a
210 sample program that requires X headers/libraries to be either
211 available via C_INCLUDE_PATH and LIBRARY_PATH or you need to
212 explicitly set CFLAGS prior to running configure.
214 * Building wxMotif on SGI
215 -------------------------
217 Using the SGI native compilers, it is recommended that you
218 also set CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS before running configure. These
222 CXXFLAGS="-mips3 -n32"
224 This is essential if you want to use the resultant binaries
225 on any other machine than the one it was compiled on. If you
226 have a 64bit machine (Octane) you should also do this to ensure
227 you don't accidently build the libraries as 64bit (which is
230 The SGI native compiler support has only been tested on Irix 6.5.
232 * Create your configuration
233 ---------------------------
236 ./configure [options]
238 If you want to use system's C and C++ compiler,
239 set environment variables CXX and CC as
243 % ./configure options
245 to see all the options please use:
249 The basic philosophy is that if you want to use different
250 configurations, like a debug and a release version,
251 or use the same source tree on different systems,
252 you have only to change the environment variable OSTYPE.
253 (Sadly this variable is not set by default on some systems
254 in some shells - on SGI's for example). So you will have to
255 set it there. This variable HAS to be set before starting
256 configure, so that it knows which system it tries to
259 Configure will complain if the system variable OSTYPE has
260 not been defined. And Make in some circumstances as well...
266 Given below are the commands to change the default behaviour,
267 i.e. if it says "--disable-threads" it means that threads
268 are enabled by default.
270 Many of the configure options have been thoroughly tested
271 in wxWidgets snapshot 6, but not yet all (ODBC not).
273 You have to add --with-motif on platforms, where Motif is
274 not the default (on Linux, configure will default to GTK).
276 --with-motif Use either Motif or Lesstif
277 Configure will look for both.
279 The following options handle the kind of library you want to build.
281 --disable-threads Compile without thread support. Threads
282 support is also required for the
285 --disable-shared Do not create shared libraries.
287 --enable-monolithic Build wxWidgets as single library instead
288 of as several smaller libraries (which is
289 the default since wxWidgets 2.5.0).
291 --disable-optimise Do not optimise the code. Can
292 sometimes be useful for debugging
293 and is required on some architectures
294 such as Sun with gcc 2.8.X which
295 would otherwise produce segvs.
297 --enable-profile Add profiling info to the object
298 files. Currently broken, I think.
300 --enable-no_rtti Enable compilation without creation of
301 C++ RTTI information in object files.
302 This will speed-up compilation and reduce
305 --enable-no_exceptions Enable compilation without creation of
306 C++ exception information in object files.
307 This will speed-up compilation and reduce
308 binary size. Also fewer crashes during the
309 actual compilation...
311 --enable-no_deps Enable compilation without creation of
312 dependency information.
314 --enable-permissive Enable compilation without checking for strict
315 ANSI conformance. Useful to prevent the build
316 dying with errors as soon as you compile with
317 Solaris' ANSI-defying headers.
319 --enable-mem_tracing Add built-in memory tracing.
321 --enable-dmalloc Use the dmalloc memory debugger.
322 Read more at www.letters.com/dmalloc/
324 --enable-debug Equivalent to --enable-debug_info plus
327 --enable-debug_info Add debug info to object files and
328 executables for use with debuggers
329 such as gdb (or its many frontends).
331 --enable-debug_flag Define __DEBUG__ and __WXDEBUG__ when
332 compiling. This enable wxWidgets' very
333 useful internal debugging tricks (such
334 as automatically reporting illegal calls)
335 to work. Note that program and library
336 must be compiled with the same debug
342 Many of the configure options have been thoroughly tested
343 in wxWidgets snapshot 6, but not yet all (ODBC not).
345 When producing an executable that is linked statically with wxGTK
346 you'll be surprised at its immense size. This can sometimes be
347 drastically reduced by removing features from wxWidgets that
348 are not used in your program. The most relevant such features
351 --without-libpng Disables PNG image format code.
353 --without-libjpeg Disables JPEG image format code.
355 --without-odbc Disables ODBC code.
357 --without-libtiff Disables TIFF image format code.
359 --without-expat Disable XML classes based on Expat parser.
361 --disable-threads Disables threads. Will also
364 --disable-sockets Disables sockets.
366 --disable-dnd Disables Drag'n'Drop.
368 --disable-clipboard Disables Clipboard.
370 --disable-streams Disables the wxStream classes.
372 --disable-file Disables the wxFile class.
374 --disable-textfile Disables the wxTextFile class.
376 --disable-intl Disables the internationalisation.
378 --disable-validators Disables validators.
380 --disable-accel Disables accel.
382 Apart from disabling certain features you can very often "strip"
383 the program of its debugging information resulting in a significant
386 Please see the output of "./configure --help" for comprehensive list
387 of all configurable options.
393 The following must be done in the base directory (e.g. ~/wxMotif
394 or ~/wxWin or whatever)
396 Now the makefiles are created (by configure) and you can compile
397 the library by typing:
401 make yourself some coffee, as it will take some time. On an old
402 Pentium 200 around 40 minutes. During compilation, you may get a few
403 warning messages depending in your compiler.
405 If you want to be more selective, you can change into a specific
406 directory and type "make" there.
408 Then you may install the library and its header files under
409 /usr/local/include/wx and /usr/local/lib respectively. You
410 have to log in as root (i.e. run "su" and enter the root
415 You can remove any traces of wxWidgets by typing
419 If you want to save disk space by removing unnecessary
424 in the various directories will do the work for you.
426 * Creating a new Project
427 ------------------------
429 1) The first way uses the installed libraries and header files
430 automatically using wx-config
432 g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs` `wx-config --cxxflags` -o myfoo
434 Using this way, a make file for the minimal sample would look
440 $(CXX) -o minimal minimal.o `wx-config --libs`
442 minimal.o: minimal.cpp mondrian.xpm
443 $(CXX) `wx-config --cxxflags` -c minimal.cpp -o minimal.o
448 This is certain to become the standard way unless we decide
451 If your application uses only some of wxWidgets libraries, you can
452 specify required libraries when running wx-config. For example,
453 `wx-config --libs=html,core` will only output link command to link
454 with libraries required by core GUI classes and wxHTML classes. See
455 the manual for more information on the libraries.
457 2) The other way creates a project within the source code
458 directories of wxWidgets. For this endeavour, you'll need
459 GNU autoconf version 2.14 and add an entry to your Makefile.in
460 to the bottom of the configure.in script and run autoconf
461 and configure before you can type make.
463 * Further notes by Julian Smart
464 ---------------------------------
466 - You may find the following script useful for compiling wxMotif,
467 especially if installing from zips (which don't preserve file
468 permissions). Make this script executable with the command
469 chmod a+x makewxmotif.
471 -------:x-----Cut here-----:x-----
473 # Sets permissions (in case we extracted wxMotif from zip files)
475 # Call from top-level wxWidgets directory.
476 # Note that this uses standard (but commonly-used) configure options;
477 # if you're feeling brave, you may wish to compile with threads:
478 # if they're not supported by the target platform, they will be disabled
481 chmod a+x configure config.sub config.guess
482 ./configure --with-shared --with-motif --with-debug_flag --with-debug_info --enable-debug --without-threads --without-sockets --without-odbc
484 -------:x-----Cut here-----:x-----
486 This script will build wxMotif using shared libraries. If you want to build
487 a static wxWidgets library, use --disable-shared.
492 - Solaris compilation with gcc: if the compiler has problems with the variable
493 argument functions, try putting the gcc fixinclude file paths early in the
496 - If you operator-related compile errors or strange memory problems
497 (for example in deletion of string arrays), set wxUSE_GLOBAL_MEMORY_OPERATORS
498 and wxUSE_MEMORY_TRACING to 0 in setup.h, and recompile.
500 - If you get an internal compiler error in gcc, turn off optimisations.
502 - Problems with XtDestroyWidget crashing in ~wxWindow have been
503 reported on SGI IRIX 6.4. This has not yet been resolved, so
504 any advice here would be very welcome. See bugs.txt for a
505 possible temporary workaround (comment out the final
506 XtDestroyWidget from ~wxWindow in window.cpp).
508 - Some compilers, such as Sun C++, may give a lot of warnings about
509 virtual functions being hidden. Please ignore these, it's correct C++ syntax.
510 If you find any incorrect instances, though, such as a
511 missing 'const' in an overridden function, please let us know.
516 - Using configure will create a release build of the library by
517 default: it's recommended to use --enable-debug configure switch
518 while developing your application. To compile in non-debug mode, use
519 --disable-debug configure switch.
524 Please send bug reports with a description of your environment,
525 compiler and the error message(s) to the wxwin-developers mailing list at:
527 wx-dev@lists.wxwindows.org
529 Julian Smart, Robert Roebling and Vadim Zeitlin, November 1999.