1 Guile Installation Guide
2 Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free software Foundation, Inc.
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.
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.
18 Brief Installation Instructions ===========================================
20 To build Guile on unix, there are two basic steps:
22 1. Type "./configure", to configure the package for your system.
23 2. Type "make", to build the package.
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.)
30 Special Instructions For Some Systems =====================================
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
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".
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:
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.)"
55 Flags Accepted by Configure ===============================================
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
89 --enable-debug-freelist --- Enable freelist debugging.
91 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
92 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
94 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
95 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
97 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
98 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
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.
105 --enable-debug-malloc --- Enable malloc debugging.
107 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
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
114 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
116 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
117 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
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.
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
130 Using Guile Without Installing It =========================================
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
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,
143 export GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/guile-snap
145 or if you're using CSH or one of its variants:
147 setenv GUILE_LOAD_PATH /home/jimb/guile-snap
150 Installing SLIB ===========================================================
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.
155 The standard installation is:
157 1. Obtain slib from http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SLIB.html
159 2. Put it in Guile's data directory, that is the directory printed when
162 guile-config info pkgdatadir
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'.
167 3. Start guile as a user with write access to the data directory and type
169 (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
171 at the Guile prompt. This will generate the slibcat catalog next to
174 SLIB's `require' is provided by the Guile module (ice-9 slib).
178 (use-modules (ice-9 slib))
183 Generic Instructions for Building Auto-Configured Packages ================
185 To compile this package:
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.
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.
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
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
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.
224 `configure' ignores any other arguments that you give it.
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
231 CC='gcc -traditional' DEFS=-D_POSIX_SOURCE ./configure
233 The `make' variables that you might want to override with environment
234 variables when running `configure' are:
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.
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 ...'
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
255 2. Type `make' to compile the package.
257 3. Type `make install' to install programs, data files, and
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'.
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'.