INSTALL

   1 Guile Installation Guide
   2 Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free software Foundation, Inc.
   3
   4    Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
   5    of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
   6    copyright notice and permission notice are preserved,
   7    and that the distributor grants the recipient permission
   8    for further redistribution as permitted by this notice.
   9
  10    Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
  11    of this document, or of portions of it,
  12    under the above conditions, provided also that they
  13    carry prominent notices stating who last changed them,
  14    and that any new or changed statements about the activities
  15    of the Free Software Foundation are approved by the Foundation.
  16
  17
  18 Brief Installation Instructions ===========================================
  19
  20 To build Guile on unix, there are two basic steps:
  21
  22         1. Type "./configure", to configure the package for your system.
  23         2. Type "make", to build the package.
  24
  25 Generic instructions for configuring and compiling GNU distributions
  26 are included below.  (For instructions how to install SLIB, the scheme
  27 procedure library, see below.)
  28
  29
  30 Special Instructions For Some Systems =====================================
  31
  32 We would like Guile to build on all systems using the simple
  33 instructions above, but it seems that a few systems still need special
  34 treatment.  If you can send us fixes for these problems, we'd be
  35 grateful.
  36
  37 SunOS 4.1: Guile's shared library support seems to be confused, but
  38     hey; shared libraries are confusing.  You may need to configure
  39     Guile with a command like:
  40         ./configure --disable-shared
  41     For more information on `--disable-shared', see below, "Flags
  42     Accepted by Configure".
  43
  44 HP/UX: GCC 2.7.2 (and maybe other versions) have trouble creating
  45     shared libraries if they depend on any non-shared libraries.  GCC
  46     seems to have other problems as well.  To work around this, we
  47     suggest you configure Guile to use the system's C compiler:
  48         CC=cc ./configure
  49
  50 NetBSD: Perry Metzger says, "Guile will build under NetBSD only using
  51     gmake -- the native make will not work.  (gmake is in our package
  52     system, so this will not be a problem when we packagize 1.3.)"
  53
  54
  55 Flags Accepted by Configure ===============================================
  56
  57 If you run the configure script with no arguments, it should examine
  58 your system and set things up appropriately.  However, there are a few
  59 switches specific to Guile you may find useful in some circumstances.
  60
  61 --enable-maintainer-mode --- If you have automake, autoconf, and
  62 libtool installed on your system, this switch causes configure to
  63 generate Makefiles which know how to automatically regenerate
  64 configure scripts, makefiles, and headers, when they are out of date.
  65 The README file says which versions of those tools you will need.
  66
  67 --with-threads --- Build a Guile executable and library that supports
  68 cooperative threading.  If you use this switch, Guile will also build
  69 and install the QuickThreads non-preemptive threading library,
  70 libqthreads, which you will need to link into your programs after
  71 libguile.  When you use `guile-config', you will pick up all
  72 neccessary linker flags automatically.
  73
  74 Cooperative threads are not yet thoroughly tested; once they are, they
  75 will be enabled by default.  The interaction with blocking I/O is
  76 pretty ad hoc at the moment.  In our experience, bugs in the thread
  77 support do not affect you if you don't actually use threads.
  78
  79 --with-modules --- Guile can dynamically load `plugin modules' during
  80 runtime, using facilities provided by libtool.  Not all platforms
  81 support this, however.  On these platforms, you can statically link
  82 the plugin modules into libguile when Guile itself is build.  XXX -
  83 how does one specify the modules?
  84
  85 --disable-shared --- Do not build shared libraries.  Normally, Guile
  86 will build shared libraries if your system supports them.  Guile
  87 always builds static libraries.
  88
  89 --enable-debug-freelist --- Enable freelist debugging.
  90
  91 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
  92 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
  93
  94 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
  95 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
  96
  97 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t)  # turn on checking of the freelist
  98 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f)  # turn off checking
  99
 100 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
 101 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell.  This can
 102 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
 103 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
 104
 105 --enable-debug-malloc --- Enable malloc debugging.
 106
 107 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
 108
 109 Checks that
 110
 111 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
 112 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
 113    scm_must_malloc
 114 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
 115
 116 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
 117 each kind.  This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
 118
 119 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
 120 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
 121 number of objects of that kind.
 122
 123 --enable-guile-debug --- Include internal debugging functions
 124 --disable-arrays     --- omit array and uniform array support
 125 --disable-posix      --- omit posix interfaces
 126 --disable-networking --- omit networking interfaces
 127 --disable-regex      --- omit regular expression interfaces
 128
 129
 130 Using Guile Without Installing It =========================================
 131
 132 If you want to run Guile without installing it, set the environment
 133 variable `GUILE_LOAD_PATH' to a colon-separated list of directories,
 134 including the directory containing this INSTALL file.  If you used a
 135 separate build directory, you'll need to include the build directory
 136 in the path as well.
 137
 138 For example, suppose the Guile distribution unpacked into a directory
 139 called `/home/jimb/guile-snap' (so the full name of this INSTALL file
 140 would be `/home/jimb/guile-snap/INSTALL').  Then you might say, if
 141 you're using Bash or any other Bourne shell variant,
 142
 143   export GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/guile-snap
 144
 145 or if you're using CSH or one of its variants:
 146
 147   setenv GUILE_LOAD_PATH /home/jimb/guile-snap
 148
 149
 150 Installing SLIB ===========================================================
 151
 152 In order to use SLIB from Guile you basically only need to put the
 153 `slib' directory _in_ one of the directories on Guile's load path.
 154
 155 The standard installation is:
 156
 157   1. Obtain slib from http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SLIB.html
 158
 159   2. Put it in Guile's data directory, that is the directory printed when
 160      you type
 161
 162        guile-config info pkgdatadir
 163
 164      at the shell prompt.  This is normally `/usr/local/share/guile', so the
 165      directory will normally have full path `/usr/local/share/guile/slib'.
 166
 167   3. Start guile as a user with write access to the data directory and type
 168
 169        (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
 170
 171      at the Guile prompt.  This will generate the slibcat catalog next to
 172      the slib directory.
 173
 174 SLIB's `require' is provided by the Guile module (ice-9 slib).
 175
 176 Example:
 177
 178   (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
 179   (require 'primes)
 180   (prime? 7)
 181
 182
 183 Generic Instructions for Building Auto-Configured Packages ================
 184
 185 To compile this package:
 186
 187 1.  Configure the package for your system.  In the directory that this
 188 file is in, type `./configure'.  If you're using `csh' on an old
 189 version of System V, you might need to type `sh configure' instead to
 190 prevent `csh' from trying to execute `configure' itself.
 191
 192 The `configure' shell script attempts to guess correct values for
 193 various system-dependent variables used during compilation, and
 194 creates the Makefile(s) (one in each subdirectory of the source
 195 directory).  In some packages it creates a C header file containing
 196 system-dependent definitions.  It also creates a file `config.status'
 197 that you can run in the future to recreate the current configuration.
 198 Running `configure' takes a minute or two.
 199
 200 To compile the package in a different directory from the one
 201 containing the source code, you must use GNU make.  `cd' to the
 202 directory where you want the object files and executables to go and
 203 run `configure' with the option `--srcdir=DIR', where DIR is the
 204 directory that contains the source code.  Using this option is
 205 actually unnecessary if the source code is in the parent directory of
 206 the one in which you are compiling; `configure' automatically checks
 207 for the source code in `..' if it does not find it in the current
 208 directory.
 209
 210 By default, `make install' will install the package's files in
 211 /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/lib, /usr/local/man, etc.  You can specify
 212 an installation prefix other than /usr/local by giving `configure' the
 213 option `--prefix=PATH'.  Alternately, you can do so by changing the
 214 `prefix' variable in the Makefile that `configure' creates (the
 215 Makefile in the top-level directory, if the package contains
 216 subdirectories).
 217
 218 You can specify separate installation prefixes for machine-specific
 219 files and machine-independent files.  If you give `configure' the
 220 option `--exec_prefix=PATH', the package will use PATH as the prefix
 221 for installing programs and libraries.  Normally, all files are
 222 installed using the same prefix.
 223
 224 `configure' ignores any other arguments that you give it.
 225
 226 If your system requires unusual options for compilation or linking
 227 that `configure' doesn't know about, you can give `configure' initial
 228 values for some variables by setting them in the environment.  In
 229 Bourne-compatible shells, you can do that on the command line like
 230 this:
 231         CC='gcc -traditional' DEFS=-D_POSIX_SOURCE ./configure
 232
 233 The `make' variables that you might want to override with environment
 234 variables when running `configure' are:
 235
 236 (For these variables, any value given in the environment overrides the
 237 value that `configure' would choose:)
 238 CC              C compiler program.
 239                 Default is `cc', or `gcc' if `gcc' is in your PATH.
 240 INSTALL         Program to use to install files.
 241                 Default is `install' if you have it, `cp' otherwise.
 242 INCLUDEDIR      Directory for `configure' to search for include files.
 243                 Default is /usr/include.
 244
 245 (For these variables, any value given in the environment is added to
 246 the value that `configure' chooses:)
 247 DEFS            Configuration options, in the form '-Dfoo -Dbar ...'
 248 LIBS            Libraries to link with, in the form '-lfoo -lbar ...'
 249
 250 If you need to do unusual things to compile the package, we encourage
 251 you to teach `configure' how to do them and mail the diffs to the
 252 address given in the README so we can include them in the next
 253 release.
 254
 255 2.  Type `make' to compile the package.
 256
 257 3.  Type `make install' to install programs, data files, and
 258 documentation.
 259
 260 4.  You can remove the program binaries and object files from the
 261 source directory by typing `make clean'.  To also remove the
 262 Makefile(s), the header file containing system-dependent definitions
 263 (if the package uses one), and `config.status' (all the files that
 264 `configure' created), type `make distclean'.
 265
 266 The file `configure.in' is used as a template to create `configure' by
 267 a program called `autoconf'.  You will only need it if you want to
 268 regenerate `configure' using a newer version of `autoconf'.
 269