!!! When sending bug reports tell us what version of wxWindows you are using (including the beta) and what compiler on what system. One example: wxMotif 2.1 beta 6, egcs 1.1.1, Redhat 5.0 !!! * 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 --with-motif make su make install ldconfig exit On all other Unices (maybe except *BSD), shared libraries are not supported out of the box due to the utter stupidity of libtool, so you'll have to do this instead: ./configure --enable-static --disable-shared make su make install ldconfig exit You may also want to try to edit the wrongly created libtool script in your build directory, if you need shared libraries on Unix. The wrong entries are something like archive_cmds="\$LD -shared .... archive_expsym_cmds="\$LD -shared .... which should be something like archive_cmds="\$CC -shared .... archive_expsym_cmds="\$CC -shared .... If you want to remove wxWindows on Unix you can do this: su make uninstall ldconfig exit * The expert case ----------------- If you want to do some more serious cross-platform programming with wxWindows, such as for GTK and Motif, you can now build two complete libraries and use them concurretly. For this end, you have to create a directory for each build of wxWindows - you may also want to create different versions of wxWindows and test them concurrently. Most typically, this would be a version configured with --enable-debug_flag and one without. Note, that only one build can currently be installed, so you'd have to use local version of the library for that purpose. For building three versions (one GTK, one Motif and a debug version of the GTK source) you'd do this: md buildmotif cd buildmotif ../configure --with-motif make cd .. md buildgtk cd buildgtk ../configure --with-gtk make cd .. md buildgtkd cd buildgtkd ../configure --with-gtk --enable-debug_flag make cd .. * The most simple errors ------------------------ You get errors during compilation: The reason is that you probably have a broken compiler, which includes almost everything that is called gcc. If you use gcc 2.8 you have to disable optimsation as the compiler will give up with an internal compiler error. If there is just any way for you to use egcs, use egcs. We cannot fix gcc. You get immediate segfault when starting any sample or application: This is either due to having compiled the library with different flags or options than your program - typically you might have the __WXDEBUG__ option set for the library but not for your program - or due to using a broken compiler (and its optimisation) such as GCC 2.8. * The most simple program ------------------------- Now create your super-application myfoo.app and compile anywhere with g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs --cflags` -o myfoo * General ----------------------- The Unix variants of wxWindows use GNU configure. If you have problems with your make use GNU make instead. If you have general problems with installation, read my homepage at http://wesley.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~wxxt for newest information. If you still don't have any success, please send a bug report to one of our mailing lists (see my homepage) INCLUDING A DESCRIPTION OF YOUR SYSTEM AND YOUR PROBLEM, SUCH AS YOUR VERSION OF GTK, WXGTK, WHAT DISTRIBUTION YOU USE AND WHAT ERROR WAS REPORTED. I know this has no effect, but I tried... * GUI libraries ----------------------- wxWindows/Motif requires the Motif library to be installed on your system. As an alternative, you may also use the free library "lesstif" which implements most of the Motif API without the licence restrictions of Motif. You can get the newest version of the Lesstif from the lesstif homepage at: http://www.lesstif.org * Additional libraries ----------------------- wxWindows/Motif requires a thread library and X libraries known to work with threads. This is the case on all commercial Unix-Variants and all Linux-Versions that are based on glibc 2 except RedHat 5.0 which is broken in many aspects. As of writing this, these Linux distributions have correct glibc 2 support: - RedHat 5.1 - Debian 2.0 - Stampede - DLD 6.0 - SuSE 6.0 You can disable thread support by running ./configure "--disable-threads" make su make install ldconfig exit NB: DO NOT COMPILE WXGTK WITH GCC AND THREADS, SINCE ALL PROGRAMS WILL CRASH UPON START-UP! Just always use egcs and be happy. * Building wxMotif on SGI -------------------------- 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. * 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 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 ------------------- Given below are the commands to change the default behaviour, i.e. if it says "--disable-threads" it means that threads are enabled by default. Many of the confiugre options have been thoroughly tested in wxWindows snapshot 6, but not yet all (ODBC not). You have to add --with-motif on platforms, where Motif is not the default (on Linux, configure will deafult to GTK). --without-gtk Don't use the GIMP ToolKit (GTK) --with-motif Use either Motif or Lesstif Configure will look for both. The following options handle the kind of library you want to build. --disable-threads Compile without thread support. Threads support is also required for the socket code to work. --disable-shared Do not create shared libraries. --disable-optimise Do not optimise the code. Can sometimes be useful for debugging and is required on some architectures such as Sun with gcc 2.8.X which would otherwise produce segvs. --enable-profile Add profiling info to the object files. Currently broken, I think. --enable-no_rtti Enable compilation without creation of C++ RTTI information in object files. This will speed-up compilation and reduce binary size. --enable-no_exceptions Enable compilation without creation of C++ exception information in object files. This will speed-up compilation and reduce binary size. Also fewer crashes during the actual compilation... --enable-mem_tracing Add built-in memory tracing. --enable-dmalloc Use the dmalloc memory debugger. Read more at www.letters.com/dmalloc/ --enable-debug_info Add debug info to object files and executables for use with debuggers such as gdb (or its many frontends). --enable-debug_flag Define __DEBUG__ and __WXDEBUG__ when compiling. This enable wxWindows' very useful internal debugging tricks (such as automatically reporting illegal calls) to work. Note that program and library must be compiled with the same debug options. * Feature Options ------------------- Many of the confiugre options have been thoroughly tested in wxWindows snapshot 6, but not yet all (ODBC not). When producing an executable that is linked statically with wxGTK you'll be surprised at its immense size. This can sometimes be drastically reduced by removing features from wxWindows that are not used in your program. The most relevant such features are --without-libpng Disables PNG image format code. --without-libjpeg Disables JPEG image format code. { --without-odbc Disables ODBC code. Not yet. } --disable-resources Disables the use of *.wxr type resources. --disable-threads Disables threads. Will also disable sockets. --disable-sockets Disables sockets. --disable-dnd Disables Drag'n'Drop. --disable-clipboard Disables Clipboard. --disable-serial Disables object instance serialiasation. --disable-streams Disables the wxStream classes. --disable-file Disables the wxFile class. --disable-textfile Disables the wxTextFile class. --disable-intl Disables the internationalisation. --disable-validators Disables validators. --disable-accel Disables accel. Apart from disabling certain features you can very often "strip" the program of its debugging information resulting in a significant reduction in size. * Compiling ------------- The following must be done in the base directory (e.g. ~/wxGTK or ~/wxWin or whatever) Now the makefiles are created (by configure) and you can compile the library by typing: make make yourself some coffee, as it will take some time. On an old 386SX possibly two weeks. During compilation, you'll get a few warning messages depending in your compiler. If you want to be more selective, you can change into a specific directiry and type "make" there. 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 You can remove any traces of wxWindows by typing make uninstall If you want to save disk space by removing unnecessary object-files: make clean in the various directories will do the work for you. * Creating a new Project -------------------------- 1) The first way uses the installed libraries and header files automatically using wx-config g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs` `wx-config --cflags` -o myfoo Using this way, a make file for the minimal sample would look like this CC = g++ minimal: minimal.o $(CC) -o minimal minimal.o `wx-config --libs` minimal.o: minimal.cpp mondrian.xpm $(CC) `wx-config --cflags` -c minimal.cpp -o minimal.o clean: rm -f *.o minimal This is certain to become the standard way unless we decide to sitch to tmake. 2) The other way creates a project within the source code directories of wxWindows. For this endeavour, you'll need the usual number of GNU tools, at least GNU automake version 1.4 GNU autoheader version 2.14 GNU autoconf version 2.14 GNU libtool version 1.2 (1.3 seems broken) and quite possibly GNU make GNU C++ and if you have all this then you probably know enough to go ahead yourself :-) ---------------------- In the hope that it will be useful, Robert Roebling