* 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 --without-threads make and drink 10 coffees. Then you may log in as root and type make install You can leave out the --without-threads option if you have a NEW Linux distribution based on glibc (e.g. RedHat 5.1) or any other Unix that comes with Posix threads or SGI threads. Now create your super-application myfoo.app and compile anywhere with gcc -o -c myfoo.cpp -I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib -lwx_gtk * 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 ------------------- 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-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. --without-shared Do not 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 or whatever) Dependencies are generated automatically using make depend (For some reason, this doesn't seem to work.) 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 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. 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 -------------------------- There are two ways to create your own project. The first 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). The other way uses the installed libraries and header files in /usr/local/include/wx and /usr/local/lib. In this case, just compile your program like this: gcc -o -c myfoo.cpp -I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib -lwx_gtk ** 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//* if you want to include some other files that you want "more visible", like a README. or a shell script for easy compilation/installation/distribution, then you have to add a variable DISTRIBUTE_ADDITIONAL= 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