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INSTALL - compiling and installing GNU LilyPond

This document describes how to build LilyPond on Unix platforms. It is also known to run and compile on Windows NT/95/98/ME/XP as well. More information on this topic can be found at the LilyPond on Windows page.

Downloading

Even numbered versions are `stable'. The webpages for the stable version (1.4) reside on the GNU servers. Big enhancements go into the latest odd numbered version (1.5), whose webpages are on the lilypond site.

Building LilyPond is an involved process. We advise to use binary packages if these are available for your platform.

Source code

If you want to compile LilyPond from source, download here:

For Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux, .spec files are included in the tarball; see instructions below.

Of course, if your platform supports LilyPond, such as Debian GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD, you're encouraged to use the native build from source drill.

The latest development version is also available through anonymous CVS. See http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=lilypond.

CVS does not contain generated files. To create configure, run

          ./autogen.sh
          

Precompiled binaries

If you want to track bleeding edge development, try:

  • Debian GNU/Linux usually has the latest binaries for the most useful stable and development versions, while
  • Mandrake Cooker also provides fairly recent versions.

Binaries are made available for other popular platforms, but as we need to compile them ourselves, they are not updated for every version released.

Upgrading

There are two options for upgrading sources.

  • if you have an unpacked source tree of a previous version, you may the patches.

    If you upgrade by patching do remember to rerun autoconf after applying the patch.

  • if you have the .tar.gz file of a previous release, you can use xdelta. This is much safer than using patches, and is the recommended way.

    The following command produces lilypond-1.4.3.tar.gz from lilypond-1.4.2.tar.gz identical (up to compression dates) to the .3 on the FTP site.

                xdelta patch lilypond-1.4.2-1.4.3.xd lilypond-1.4.2.tar.gz
              

Font problems.

If you are upgrading from a previous version of LilyPond, be sure to remove all old font files. These include .pk and .tfm files that may be located in /var/lib/texmf, /var/spool/texmf, /var/tmp/texmf or prefix/share/lilypond/fonts/. A script automating this has been included, see buildscripts/clean-fonts.sh.

Requirements

Compilation

You need the following packages to compile Lilypond.

  • The GNU c++ compiler (version 2.95.2 or newer). EGCS 1.1 may work, but is no longer supported. Check out the gcc site.

    WARNING: if you choose to upgrade to GCC 3.x, enquire if your distribution supports g++ 3.x and flex. At the time of writing (Fri Jul 5 2002), no distribution that we know of ships a flex that generates gcc-3.1.x compliant C++ code.

  • Python (version 1.5 or newer). Check out the python website.
  • GUILE (version 1.4 or newer). Check out the GUILE webpage.
  • GNU Make. Check out the GNU make FTP directory.
  • Flex (version 2.5.4a or newer). Check out the Flex webpage.

    WARNING: plain Flex 2.5.4(a) generates invalid C++ code. GCC 3.x chokes on this. If you wish to use GCC 3.x, make sure that your distribution supports g++ 3.x and flex. For workarounds, see lexer-gcc-3.0.patch and lexer-gcc-3.1.sh in the source directory.

  • Bison (version 1.25 or newer). Check out the bison webpage
  • TeX.

    TeX is used as an output backend.

    Also, TeX's libkpathsea is used to find the fonts (.mf, .afm, .tfm). Make sure you have tetex 1.0 or newer (1.0.6 is known to work). You may need to install a tetex-devel (or tetex-dev or libkpathsea-dev) package too.

  • Texinfo (version 4.2 or newer). The documentation of lily is written in texinfo. Check out the texinfo FTP directory.
  • The geometry package for LaTeX is needed to use ly2dvi. It is available at the FTP directory for geometry. This package is normally included with the TeX distribution.
  • kpathsea, a library for searching (TeX) files. kpathsea is usually included with your installation of TeX. You may need to install a tetex-devel or tetex-dev package too. If kpathsea is not installed in a directory where the compiler normally looks, read the hints for Slackware below.

    In the very unlikely case that kpathsea is not available for your platform (ie, you're not running GNU/Linux, Windows, or any recent UNIX), you can compile LilyPond without kpathsea support. In that case, you'll probably have to indicate where TeX's tfm files live. Invoke configure something like:

                   ./configure --without-kpathsea --enable-tfm-path=/usr/share/texmf/fonts/tfm/public/cm/:/usr/share/texmf/fonts/tfm/ams/symbols
                   

Running requirements

GNU LilyPond does use a lot of resources. For operation you need the following software

For running LilyPond successfully you have to help TeX and MetaFont find various files. The recommended way of doing so is adjusting the environment variables in the start-up scripts of your shell. Appropriate Csh and bourne sh scripts are left in buildscripts/out/lilypond-profile and buildscripts/out/lilypond-login after compilation.

LilyPond is a big and slow program. A fast CPU and plenty of RAM is recommended for comfortable use.

Building documentation

You can view the documentation online at http://www.lilypond.org/stable/Documentation/out-www/, but you can also build it locally. This process requires a successful compile of lilypond. The documentation is built by issuing

     
       make web-doc
     
     

Building the website requires some additional tools:

Building LilyPond

to install GNU LilyPond, type:

     	gunzip -c lilypond-x.y.z | tar xf -
     	cd lilypond-x.y.z
     	./configure		# run with --help to see appropriate options
     	make
     	make install
             sh buildscripts/clean-fonts.sh
     

If you are doing an upgrade, you should remove all feta .pk and .tfm files. A script has been provided to do the work for you, see buildscripts/clean-fonts.sh.

If you are not root, you should choose a --prefix argument that points into your home directory, eg.

     
     	./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
     
     

In this case, you have to insert the contents of buildscripts/out/lilypond-login or buildscripts/out/lilypond-profile into your start up scripts by hand.

Configuring for multiple platforms

If you want to build multiple versions of LilyPond with different configuration settings, you can use the --enable-config=CONF option of configure. You should use make conf=CONF to generate the output in out-CONF. Example: suppose I want to build with and without profiling. Then I'd use the following for the normal build,

     
           ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr/ --enable-checking
           make
           make install
     

and for the profiling version, I specify a different configuration.

     
           ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr/ --enable-profiling --enable-config=prof --disable-checking
           make conf=prof
           make conf=prof install
     
     

Emacs mode

An Emacs mode for entering music and running LilyPond is contained in the source archive as lilypond-mode.el, lilypond-indent.el, lilypond-font-lock.el and lilypond.words. You should install these files to a directory included in your load-path. File lilypond-init.el should be placed to load-path/site-start.d/ or appended to your ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.el. If you have installed a precompiled LilyPond package, these files can be found in /usr/share/doc/lilypond-x.y.z/.

As a user, you may want add your source path or, e.g., ~/site-lisp/ to your load-path. Append the following line (modified) to your ~/.emacs:

          (setq load-path (append (list (expand-file-name "~/site-lisp")) load-path))
          

If you have the latest LilyPond-1.4.x Debian package, LilyPond-mode is automatically loaded, you not even need to modify your ~/.emacs file.

Vim mode

A Vim mode for entering music and running LilyPond is contained in the source archive. Append the content of vimrc to ~/.vimrc to get shortcuts. Install file lilypond.words to ~/.vim/ to get auto-completion. Syntax highlighting you get by installing lilypond.vim to ~/.vim/syntax/ and appending the following to ~/.vim/filetype.vim:

          " my filetype file
          if exists("did_load_filetypes")
            finish
          endif
          augroup filetypedetect
            au! BufRead,BufNewFile  *.ly          setfiletype lilypond
          augroup
          

Compiling for distributions

Red Hat Linux

Red Hat 7.x i386 RPMS are available from ftp://ftp.cs.uu.nl/pub/GNU/LilyPond/binaries/. For running on a Red Hat system you need these packages: guile, tetex, tetex-latex, tetex-dvips, libstdc++, python, ghostscript.

You can also compile them yourself. A spec file is in make/out/lilypond.redhat.spec. This file is distributed along with the sources. You can make the rpm by issuing

     
             cp lilypond-x.y.z.tar.gz /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/
             tar xfz lilypond-x.y.z.tar.gz
     	rpm -bb lilypond-x.y.z/make/out/lilypond.redhat.spec
     	rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/lilypond-x.y.z
     
     

For compilation on a Red Hat system you need these packages, in addition to the those needed for running: glibc-devel, gcc-c++, libstdc++-devel, guile-devel, flex, bison, texinfo, groff, mftrace, netpbm-progs, autotrace, t1utils.

LinuxPPC

Some LinuxPPC RPMS should available from ftp://ftp.cs.uu.nl/pub/GNU/LilyPond/binaries/.

A LinuxPPC RPM can be made using the lilypond.redhat.spec file.

SuSE

Some SUSE RPMS should available from ftp://ftp.lilypond.org/pub/LilyPond/binaries/SuSE.

You can also compile a RPM for SUSE yourself. A spec file is in make/out/lilypond.suse.spec, see the instructions for building the Red Hat RPM.

You must have the following packages: guile tcsh tetex te_latex te_kpath te_mpost libpng python gpp libgpp gettext autoconf netpbm libnetpb gs_serv gs_lib gs_fonts guile

Slackware

No precompiled packages for Slackware are available.

Problems have been reported with Slackware 7.0; apparently, it ships with a faulty compiler. Do not compile LilyPond with -O2 on this platform.

At least on Slackware 8.0, you have to manually specify the paths to the Kpathsea library, see the section on kpathsea

Mandrake

Some binaries are available at rpmfind.net. Refer to http://rpmfind.net/linux/mandrake/cooker/contrib/RPMS/.

You can also compile a RPM for Mandrake yourself. A spec file is in make/out/lilypond.mandrake.spec, see the instructions for building the Red Hat RPM.

Debian GNU/Linux

A Debian package is also available. You may install it easily by running apt-get as root:

     
     	apt-get install lilypond lilypond-doc
     

You can also compile the .deb for Debian yourself, do:

     
     	apt-get -b source lilypond
     

If you're real impatient, you may even do:

     
     	cd lilypond-x.y.z   # a previous version
             uscan               # download and build latest directly from upstream
     

Debian's TeX installation is a bit short on memory, you may want to increase it like this:

     --- texmf.cnf.orig	Sun Dec 16 23:47:07 2001
     +++ texmf.cnf	Sun Dec 16 23:46:34 2001
     @ -411,8 +411,8 @
      main_memory.context = 1500000
      main_memory.mpost = 1000000
      main_memory = 263000 % words of inimemory available; also applies to inimf&mp
     -extra_mem_top = 0    % extra high memory for chars, tokens, etc.
     -extra_mem_bot = 0    % extra low memory for boxes, glue, breakpoints, etc.
     +extra_mem_top = 1000000    % extra high memory for chars, tokens, etc.
     +extra_mem_bot = 1000000    % extra low memory for boxes, glue, breakpoints, etc.
     
      obj_tab_size.context = 300000
     
     @ -430,7 +430,7 @
      % Max number of characters in all strings, including all error messages,
      % help texts, font names, control sequences.  These values apply to TeX and MP.
      pool_size.context = 750000
     -pool_size = 125000
     +pool_size = 250000
      % Minimum pool space after TeX/MP's own strings; must be at least
      % 25000 less than pool_size, but doesn't need to be nearly that large.
      string_vacancies.context = 45000
     

You could also export extra_mem_top and extra_mem_bot as environment variables if you do not want to or cannot modify /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf.

Alternatively, visit

Please contact Anthony Fok lilypond@packages.debian.org for more information.

The build scripts are in the subdirectory debian/; you can make the .deb by doing, for example:

     	$ su - root
     	# dpkg --purge lilypond lilypond1.3
     	# exit
     	$ tar xzf lilypond-1.4.3.tar.gz
     	$ cd lilypond-1.4.3
     	$ dch -p -v 1.4.3-0.local.1 "Local build."
     	$ debuild -B
     	$ su - root
     	# dpkg -i ../lilypond_1.4.3*.deb
     	# exit
     	$
     

Use command debuild instead of debuild -B if you have a very fast machine and want to build the HTML, PS and DVI documentation too.

For compilation on a Debian GNU/Linux system you need these packages, in addition to the those needed for running:

  • g++, cpp, libc6-dev, libstdc++<your-libstdc++-version-here>-dev
  • libguile<your-libguile-version-here>-dev
  • make, m4, flex, bison
  • gettext
  • groff, texinfo
  • tetex-base, tetex-bin, tetex-extra, libkpathsea-dev or tetex-dev
  • dpkg-dev, debhelper, fakeroot
  • gs, netpbm
  • pnmtopng (only in Debian 2.2; pnmtopng has been merged with netpbm in Debian testing/unstable.)

Most of these are listed on the Build-Depends line in the debian/control file. To ensure the creation of the lilypond deb is trouble-free, we recommend that you first install the following packages by running \apt-get as root before building the package:

For Debian 2.2:

     	apt-get install task-debian-devel task-c++-dev \
     		python-base libguile6-dev tetex-bin tetex-dev \
     		tetex-extra flex bison texinfo groff gs \
     		netpbm pnmtopng m4 gettext
     

For Debian in development ("unstable", the future 2.3 or 3.0):

     	apt-get install binutils cpp gcc libc6-dev \
             	g++ libstdc++2.10-dev \
     		python-base libguile-dev tetex-bin libkpathsea-dev \
     		tetex-extra flex bison texinfo  groff gs \
     		netpbm m4 gettext
     

And, just so that old fonts from previous versions of LilyPond won't interfere with your build, you may want to do this before the build too:

     	dpkg --purge lilypond lilypond1.3
     

MacOS X

LilyPond is available through fink, in the unstable cvs distribution.

You need to:

  • Get the Fink package manager from http://fink.sourceforge.net
  • Get the Lilypond package description by enabling the "unstable" tree in fink and executing fink selfupdate-cvs.

Then do:

          	fink install lilypond-unstable
          

That's it! The command should compile and install all LilyPond prerequisites (python, TeX, X11, ghostscript) and then LilyPond itself.

compiling on MacOS X

LilyPond has been built on Darwin, to be precise, on:

         Darwin buoux.aspiratie.nl 5.3 Darwin Kernel Version 5.3: Thu Jan 24
         22:06:02 PST 2002; root:xnu/xnu-201.19.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC  Power Macintosh powerpc
     

using:

         Apple Computer, Inc. version gcc-932.1, based on gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release)
     

To make sure you have all packages needed to build LilyPond installed, run as root:

             apt-get install bash python guile debianutils flex bison texinfo \
                     ghostscript6 netpbm m4 gettext
     

and:

             fink install tetex
     

For more information about apt-get and fink, see fink.sourceforge.net.

Then, configure, patch, make and install LilyPond using these commands:

             CC="cc -I/sw/include" CXX="c++ -I/sw/include" LDFLAGS="-L/sw/lib" \
                 ./configure --prefix=/sw
             make -C lily out/parser.hh out/parser.cc out/config.h
             patch -p0 < darwin.patch
             make -C lily out/parser.o
             make DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT=/dev/null all
             make install
     

For installing, you must be root, of course.

Problems

For help and questions use lilypond-user@gnu.org. Please consult the FAQ before mailing your problems. If you find bugs, please send bug reports to bug-lilypond@gnu.org.

Bugs that are not fault of LilyPond are documented here.

Linking to kpathsea

If kpathsea and the corresponding header files are installed in some directory where GCC does not search by default, for example in /usr/local/lib/ and /usr/local/include/ respectively, you have to explicitly tell configure where to find it. To do this,

  • rm config.cache
  • export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/share/texmf/lib
  • export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/share/texmf/include
  • ./configure
Once configure has found them, the paths are stored in config.make and will be used even if you don't have the environment variables set during make.

Gcc-3.0.4

Gcc 3.0.4, is a bit flaky. Try downgrading to 2.95.x, or if you're adventurous (see below), upgrading to 3.1.x.

Flex-2.5.4a and gcc-3.x

Flex 2.5.4a does not produce g++-3.0 compliant C++ code. To compile LilyPond with gcc-3.0 you may do:

             CC=gcc-3.0 CXX=g++-3.0 ./configure --enable-config=gcc-3.0
             make conf=gcc-3.0 -C lily out-gcc-3.0/lexer.cc
             patch -p1 < lexer-gcc-3.0.patch
             make conf=gcc-3.0 -C lily
     

Note that this is fixed in Debian/unstable for flex >= 2.5.4a-13.

Flex-2.5.4a and gcc-3.1.x

Flex 2.5.4a does not produce g++-3.1.1 compliant C++ code. To compile LilyPond with gcc-3.1.1 you may do:

             CONF=gcc-3.1 ./lexer-gcc-3.1.sh
             CPPFLAGS=-I$(pwd)/lily/out-gcc-3.1 CC=gcc-3.1 CXX=g++-3.1 \
                 ./configure --enable-config=gcc-3.1
             CONF=gcc-3.1 ./lexer-gcc-3.1.sh
             make conf=gcc-3.1
     

This assumes that the GCC 3.1 binaries are called gcc-3.1 and g++-3.1. Note that this is not fixed in Debian/unstable for flex <= 2.5.4a-26.

Linux-2.4.0, Guile-1.4 -with-threads

There's a bug in certain kernels around version 2.4.0, that is triggered when using Guile 1.4 compiled with pthreads. You'll see random segmentation fault crashes of LilyPond. Upgrade to a newer version of Linux. If you can't do that, you may try to recompiling Guile without threads (YMMV):

              guile-1.4$ ./configure --without-threads; make all install
     

OpenBSD

  • By default, gcc on OpenBSD doesn't include /usr/local/include and /usr/local/lib in the system paths. Depending upon where/how you installed kpathsea and other libraries, you may need to refer to the section "Linking to kpathsea".

NetBSD

  • The flex precompiled in NetBSD-1.4.2 is broken. Download flex-2.5.4a, build, install.
  • The configuration of Gcc (egcs-2.91.60 19981201 (egcs-1.1.1 release)) does not include /usr/pkg paths. Configure using:
              
              CFLAGS='-I /usr/pkg/include' LDFLAGS='-L/usr/pkg/lib' ./configure
              
              

Solaris

  • Solaris7, ./configure

    ./configure needs a POSIX compliant shell. On Solaris7, /bin/sh is not yet POSIX compliant, but /bin/ksh or bash is. Please run configure like:

                      CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/ksh ksh -c ./configure
              
    or
                      CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/bash bash -c ./configure
              
  • Sparc64/Solaris 2.6, GNU make-3.77

    GNU make-3.77 is buggy on this platform, upgrade to 3.78.1 or newer.

  • Sparc64/Solaris 2.6, ld

    Not yet resolved.

AIX

  • AIX 4.3 ld

    The following is from the gcc install/SPECIFIC file.

    Some versions of the AIX binder (linker) can fail with a relocation overflow severe error when the -bbigtoc option is used to link GCC-produced object files into an executable that overflows the TOC. A fix for APAR IX75823 (OVERFLOW DURING LINK WHEN USING GCC AND -BBIGTOC) is available from IBM Customer Support and from its 27service.boulder.ibm.com website as PTF U455193.

    Binutils does not support AIX 4.3 (at least through release 2.9). GNU as and GNU ld will not work properly and one should not configure GCC to use those GNU utilities. Use the native AIX tools which do interoperate with GCC.

    add -Wl,-bbigtoc to USER_LDFLAGS, ie:

                  LDFLAGS='-Wl,-bbigtoc' ./configure
              
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Please send GNU LilyPond questions and comments to lilypond-user@gnu.org.

Please send comments on these web pages to (address unknown)

Copyright (c) 1997--2002 Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.


This page was built from LilyPond-1.7.14 (development-branch) by

Buchan Milne <(address unknown)>, Thu Mar 6 21:11:51 2003 CET.