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INSTALL - compiling and installing GNU LilyPond

Obtaining

You can get the latest version of LilyPond at ftp://ftp.cs.uu.nl/pub/GNU/LilyPond/.

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

If you do not want to download the entire archive for each version, the safest method for upgrading is to use xdelta, see ftp://ftp.xcf.berkeley.edu/pub/xdelta/.

The following command produces lilypond-1.3.122.tar.gz from lilypond-1.3.121 identical (up to compression dates) to the .122 on the FTP site.

  xdelta patch lilypond-1.3.121-1.3.122.xd lilypond-1.3.121.tar.gz

Prerequisites

For compilation you need:

  • A GNU system: GNU LilyPond is known to run on these GNU systems: Linux (PPC, intel), FreeBSD, AIX, NeXTStep, IRIX, Digital Unix and Solaris.
  • Lots of disk space: LilyPond takes between 30 and 100 mb to compile if you use debugging information. If you are short on disk-space run configure with --disable-debugging.
  • Although we recommend to use Unix, LilyPond is known to run on Windows NT/95/98 as well. See Section Windows NT/95,es.
  • A reasonable C++ compiler: EGCS 1.1, GCC 2.95.2 or newer. Check out ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/.
  • Python 1.5, Check out ftp://ftp.python.org or ftp://ftp.cwi.nl/pub/python.
  • GUILE 1.3.4 or newer, check out http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/guile.html. Version 1.4 is recommended for better performance.
  • GNU Make. Check out ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/.
  • Flex (version 2.5.4a or newer). Check out ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/non-gnu/flex/.
  • Bison (version 1.25 or newer). Check out ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/.
  • TeX. If you want LilyPond to use kpathsea support (recommended), 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). Check out ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/. Most documentation is in texinfo.
  • The geometry package for LaTeX is needed to use ly2dvi. Available at ftp://ftp.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/supported/geometry or at mirror site ftp://ftp.dante.de
  • 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 do not want to use PostScript output, 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.

Running

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

  • TeX.
  • A PostScript printer and/or viewer (such as Ghostscript) is strongly recommended. Xdvi will show all embedded PostScript too if you have Ghostscript installed.
  • GUILE 1.3.4, or newer. Check out http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

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 sh scripts are left in buildscripts/out/lilypond-profile and buildscripts/out/lilypond-login after compilation.

The empty path component represents TeX and MetaFont's default search paths. Scripts with the proper paths for the bourne and C-shell respectively are generated in buildscripts/out/lilypond-profile and buildscripts/out/lilypond-login during compilation.

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

Website

The website is the most convenient form to use for reading the documentation on-line documentation. It is made by entering

  make htmldoc

This does require a functioning LilyPond. The binary doesn't have to be installed.

If you want to auto-generate Lily's website, you'll need some additional conversion tools.

Configuring and compiling

to install GNU LilyPond, simply type:

	gunzip -c lilypond-x.y.z | tar xf -
	cd lilypond-x.y.z
	./configure		# fill in your standard prefix with --prefix
	make
	make install

This will install a number of files, something close to:

	/usr/local/man/man1/midi2ly.1
	/usr/local/man/man1/abc2ly.1
	/usr/local/man/man1/etf2ly.1
	/usr/local/man/man1/convert-ly.1
	/usr/local/man/man1/lilypond-book.1
	/usr/local/man/man1/lilypond.1
	/usr/local/bin/lilypond
	/usr/local/bin/midi2ly
	/usr/local/bin/convert-ly
	/usr/local/bin/lilypond-book
	/usr/local/bin/abc2ly
	/usr/local/bin/pmx2ly
	/usr/local/bin/musedata2ly
	/usr/local/bin/etf2ly
	/usr/local/share/lilypond/*
	/usr/local/share/locale/{....}/LC_MESSAGES/lilypond.mo

The above assumes that you are root and have the GNU development tools, and your make is GNU make. If this is not the case, you can adjust your environment variables to your taste:

	export CPPFLAGS="-I /home/me/my_include -DWEIRD_FOOBAR"
	./configure

CPPFLAGS are the preprocessor flags.

The configure script is Cygnus configure, and it will accept --help. If you are not root, you will probably have to make it with a different --prefix option. Our favourite location is

	./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr

In this case, you will have to set up MFINPUTS, and TEXINPUTS accordingly.

Since GNU LilyPond currently is beta, you are advised to also use

	--enable-debugging
	--enable-checking

Options to configure include:

--enable-printing
Enable debugging print routines (lilypond -D option)
--enable-optimise
Set maximum optimisation: compile with -O2. This can be unreliable on some compiler/platform combinations (eg, DEC Alpha and PPC)
--enable-profiling
Compile with support for profiling.
--enable-config
Output to a different configuration file. Needed for multi-platform builds

All options are documented in the configure help The option --enable-optimise is recommended for Real Life usage.

If you do

	make all

everything will be compiled, but nothing will be installed. The resulting binaries can be found in the subdirectories out/ (which contain all files generated during compilation).

Configuring for multiple platforms

If you want to compile LilyPond with different configuration settings, then, you can use the --enable-config option. Example: suppose I want to build with and without profiling. Then I'd use the following for the normal build,

      ./configure --prefix=~ --disable-optimise --enable-checking
      make
      make install

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

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

Installing

if you have done a successful make, then a simple

	make install

should do the trick.

If you are doing an upgrade, please remember to remove obsolete .pk and .tfm files of the fonts. A script has been provided to do the work for you, see bin/clean-fonts.sh.

Red Hat Linux

Red Hat Linux users can compile an RPM. A spec file is in make/out/lilypond.spec; it is distributed along with the sources.

You can make the rpm by issuing

	rpm -tb lilypond-x.y.z.tar.gz
	rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/lilypond-x.y.z

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

For compilation on a Red Hat system you need these packages, in addition to the those needed for running:

  • glibc-devel
  • libstdc++-devel
  • guile-devel
  • flex
  • bison
  • texinfo
  • tetex-devel

Debian GNU/Linux

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

	apt-get install lilypond1.3

Alternatively, visit

You may contact Anthony Fok foka@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-1.3.122.tar.gz
	$ cd lilypond-1.3.122
	$ dch -p -v 1.3.122-0.local.1 "Local build."
	$ debuild
	$ su - root
	# dpkg -i ../lilypond1.3_1.3.122*.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 2.2r2)
  • tetex-base, tetex-bin, tetex-extra, libkpathsea-dev or tetex-dev
  • dpkg-dev, debhelper, fakeroot
  • gs, netpbm, pnmtopng

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 before starting dpkg-buildpackage by running apt-get as root.

For Debian 2.2 (or 2.2r2, 2.2r3):

	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 pnmtopng 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

Windows NT/95

Separate instructions on building for W32 are available; See the files in Documentation/ntweb/, included with the sources.

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 LilyPond's fault are listed in our TODO list on the web, or demonstrated in input/bugs/.

Bugs that are not LilyPond's fault are documented here.

LinuxPPC Bugs:

  • egcs-1.1.2-12c (stock LinuxPPC R5) has a serious bug, upgrade to fixed in egcs-1.1.2-12f or gcc-2.95-0a, ftp://dev.linuxppc.org/users/fsirl/R5/RPMS/ppc/
  • egcs-1.0.2 (LinuxPPC R4): all compiling with -O2 is suspect, in particular guile-1.3, and Lily herself will break.

Linux-i386

  • SuSE6.2 and similar platforms (glibc 2.1, libstdc++ 2.9.0)

    Lily will crash during parsing (which suggests a C++ library incompatibility). Precise cause, precise platform description or solution are not known.

    Note that this only happens on some computers with the said platform.

  • libg++ 2.7

    LilyPond occasionally crashes while parsing the initialisation files. This is a very obscure bug, and usually entering the commandline differently "fixes" it.

    	lilypond input.ly
    

    and

    	lilypond -I. ./input.ly
    
    makes a difference

    Typical stacktrace:

    	SIGSEGV
    	__libc_malloc (bytes=16384)
    	?? ()
    	yyFlexLexer::yy_create_buffer ()
    	Includable_lexer::new_input (this=0x8209a00, s={strh_ = {
    

    This behaviour has been observed with machines that have old libg++ versions (LinuxPPC feb '98, Red Hat 4.x).

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, 1998, 1999, 2000 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-1.3.129 by

<(address unknown)>, Mon Feb 26 13:36:39 2001 CET.