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Table of Contents

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 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 (1.2) reside on the GNU servers. Big enhancements go into the latest odd numbered version (1.3), whose webpages are on the lilypond site.

source code

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

Binaries

Binaries are available, but 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-1.4.1.tar.gz from lilypond-1.4.0.tar.gz identical (up to compression dates) to the .1 on the FTP site.

      xdelta patch lilypond-1.4.0-1.4.1.xd lilypond-1.4.0.tar.gz
    

Requirements

Compilation

You need the following packages to compile Lilypond.

  • A reasonably new C++ compiler: EGCS 1.1, GCC 2.95.2 or newer. Check out the gcc site.
  • Python 1.5, Check out the python website.
  • GUILE 1.3.4 or newer, check out the GUILE webpage. Version 1.4 is recommended for better performance.
  • GNU Make. Check out the GNU make FTP directory.
  • Flex (version 2.5.4a or newer). Check out the Flex webpage.
  • 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 package too.

  • Texinfo (version 4.0 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.
  • MetaPost, needed for generating PostScript fonts. Please note that tetex-0.4pl8 (included with Red Hat 5.x) does not include mfplain.mp, which is needed for producing the scalable font files.

    If you don't have MetaPost and don't want to use PostScript output, then edit mf/GNUmakefile, removing the line saying PFA_FILES=.

  • 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.

    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.

Website requirements

The documentation comes in the form of a website. You can view this website on the internet, but you can also build it locally. This process requires a successful compile of lilypond. The website 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=~ --enable-checking
      make
      make install

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

      ./configure --prefix=~ --enable-profiling --enable-config=prof --disable-checking
      make conf=prof
      make conf=prof install

Emacs mode

An emacs mode for LilyPond is included with the source archive as lilypond-mode.el and lilypond-font-lock.el. If you have an RPM, it is in /usr/share/doc/lilypond-X/. You have to install it yourself.

Add this to your ~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.el:

    (load-library "lilypond-mode.el")
    (setq auto-mode-alist
      (cons '("\\.ly$" . LilyPond-mode) auto-mode-alist))
    (add-hook 'LilyPond-mode-hook (lambda () (turn-on-font-lock)))

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

Compiling for distributions

Red Hat Linux

Red Hat 7.0 i386 RPMS are available from ftp://ftp.cs.uu.nl/pub/GNU/LilyPond/binaries/.

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

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

For running on a Red Hat system you need these packages: guile, tetex, tetex-latex, tetex-dvips, libstdc++, python, ghostscript.

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, tetex-devel, groff, libgr-progs.

Warning

There appears to be a problem with the Xdvi shipped with Red Hat 7.1. Symptoms: Xdvi responds very sluggishly or hangs while viewing lilypond output. The cause for this problem is unknown; you are advised to recompile Xdvi from source.

LinuxPPC

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

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

SuSE

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

You can also compile a RPM for SUSE yourself. A spec file is in make/out/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.

Mandrake

Some binaries are available at rpmfind.net. Refer to ftp://ftp.rpmfind.net/linux/Mandrake-devel/cooker/contrib/RPMS/.

Debian GNU/Linux

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

	apt-get install lilypond

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

--- /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf.dpkg	Sun Jan 28 14:12:14 2001
+++ /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf	Fri Apr 27 11:09:35 2001
@ -384,8 +384,8 @
 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 = 100000    % extra high memory for chars, tokens, etc.
+extra_mem_bot = 100000    % extra low memory for boxes, glue, breakpoints, etc.

 obj_tab_size.context = 256000

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-1.4.1.tar.gz
	$ cd lilypond-1.4.1
	$ dch -p -v 1.4.1-0.local.1 "Local build."
	$ debuild
	$ su - root
	# dpkg -i ../lilypond_1.4.1*.deb
	# exit
	$

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
  • bibtex2html (not in Debian 2.2)
  • 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 task-debian-devel task-c++-dev \
		python-base libguile9-dev tetex-bin libkpathsea-dev \
		tetex-extra flex bison texinfo bibtex2html 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

Problems

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

Bugs that are not fault of LilyPond are documented here.

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:

  • 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
    
Go back to index of LilyPond.

Please send GNU LilyPond questions and comments to gnu-music-discuss@gnu.org.

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

Copyright (c) 1997--2001 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-1.4.2 by

<(address unknown)>, Fri Jun 1 16:16:11 2001 CEST.