Brief Installation Instructions =========================================== To build Guile on unix, there are two basic steps: 1. Type "./configure", to configure the package for your system. 2. Type "make", to build the package. Generic instructions for configuring and compiling GNU distributions are included below. Special Instructions For Some Systems ===================================== We would like Guile to build on all systems using the simple instructions above, but it seems that a few systems still need special treatment. If you can send us fixes for these problems, we'd be grateful. SunOS 4.1: Guile's shared library support seems to be confused, but hey; shared libraries are confusing. You may need to configure Guile with a command like: ./configure --disable-shared For more information on `--disable-shared', see below, "Flags Accepted by Configure". HP/UX: GCC 2.7.2 (and maybe other versions) have trouble creating shared libraries if they depend on any non-shared libraries. GCC seems to have other problems as well. To work around this, we suggest you configure Guile to use the system's C compiler: CC=cc ./configure NetBSD: Perry Metzger says, "Guile will build under NetBSD only using gmake -- the native make will not work. (gmake is in our package system, so this will not be a problem when we packagize 1.3.)" What You Get ============================================================== The `configure' script examines your system, and adapts Guile to compile and run on it. The `make' command builds several things: - An executable file `guile/guile', which is an interactive shell for talking with the Guile Scheme interpreter. - An object library `libguile/.libs/libguile.a', containing the Guile Scheme interpreter, ready to be linked into your programs. To install Guile, type `make install'. This installs the executable and libraries mentioned above, as well as Guile's header files and Scheme libraries. Make also builds shared libraries, on systems that support them. Because of the nature of shared libraries, before linking against them, you should probably install them; `make install' takes care of this. Flags Accepted by Configure =============================================== If you run the configure script with no arguments, it should examine your system and set things up appropriately. However, there are a few switches specific to Guile you may find useful in some circumstances. --enable-maintainer-mode --- If you have automake, autoconf, and libtool installed on your system, this switch causes configure to generate Makefiles which know how to automatically regenerate configure scripts, makefiles, and headers, when they are out of date. The README file says which versions of those tools you will need. --with-threads --- Build a Guile executable and library that supports cooperative threading. If you use this switch, Guile will also build and install the QuickThreads non-preemptive threading library, libqt.a, which you will need to link into your programs after libguile.a. That is, you should pass the switches -lguile -qt to your linker. Cooperative threads are not yet thoroughly tested; once they are, they will be enabled by default. The interaction with blocking I/O is pretty ad hoc at the moment. In our experience, bugs in the thread support do not affect you if you don't actually use threads. --enable-dynamic-linking --- Build a Guile executable and library providing Scheme functions which can load a shared library and initialize it, perhaps thereby adding new functions to Guile. This feature is enabled by default; you only need to use this option (as `--enable-dynamic-linking=no') if you want to build a Guile which does not support dynamic linking. This option has no effect on systems that do not support shared libraries. --disable-shared --- Do not build shared libraries. Normally, Guile will build shared libraries if your system supports them. Guile always builds static libraries. Using Guile Without Installing It ========================================= If you want to run Guile without installing it, set the environment variable `GUILE_LOAD_PATH' to a colon-separated list of directories, including the directory containing this INSTALL file. If you used a separate build directory, you'll need to include the build directory in the path as well. For example, suppose the Guile distribution unpacked into a directory called `/home/jimb/guile-snap' (so the full name of this INSTALL file would be `/home/jimb/guile-snap/INSTALL'). Then you might say, if you're using Bash or any other Bourne shell variant, export GUILE_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/guile-snap or if you're using CSH or one of its variants: setenv GUILE_LOAD_PATH /home/jimb/guile-snap Building a Statically Linked Guile ======================================== Sometimes it's useful to build a statically-linked version of the Guile executable. It's helpful in debugging, and for producing stand-alone executables for distribution to machines you don't control. To do this, set the LDFLAGS environment variable to `-static' before you configure, or before you run the `make' command to build the executable. Generic Instructions for Building Auto-Configured Packages ================ To compile this package: 1. Configure the package for your system. In the directory that this file is in, type `./configure'. If you're using `csh' on an old version of System V, you might need to type `sh configure' instead to prevent `csh' from trying to execute `configure' itself. The `configure' shell script attempts to guess correct values for various system-dependent variables used during compilation, and creates the Makefile(s) (one in each subdirectory of the source directory). In some packages it creates a C header file containing system-dependent definitions. It also creates a file `config.status' that you can run in the future to recreate the current configuration. Running `configure' takes a minute or two. To compile the package in a different directory from the one containing the source code, you must use GNU make. `cd' to the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and run `configure' with the option `--srcdir=DIR', where DIR is the directory that contains the source code. Using this option is actually unnecessary if the source code is in the parent directory of the one in which you are compiling; `configure' automatically checks for the source code in `..' if it does not find it in the current directory. By default, `make install' will install the package's files in /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/lib, /usr/local/man, etc. You can specify an installation prefix other than /usr/local by giving `configure' the option `--prefix=PATH'. Alternately, you can do so by changing the `prefix' variable in the Makefile that `configure' creates (the Makefile in the top-level directory, if the package contains subdirectories). You can specify separate installation prefixes for machine-specific files and machine-independent files. If you give `configure' the option `--exec_prefix=PATH', the package will use PATH as the prefix for installing programs and libraries. Normally, all files are installed using the same prefix. `configure' ignores any other arguments that you give it. If your system requires unusual options for compilation or linking that `configure' doesn't know about, you can give `configure' initial values for some variables by setting them in the environment. In Bourne-compatible shells, you can do that on the command line like this: CC='gcc -traditional' DEFS=-D_POSIX_SOURCE ./configure The `make' variables that you might want to override with environment variables when running `configure' are: (For these variables, any value given in the environment overrides the value that `configure' would choose:) CC C compiler program. Default is `cc', or `gcc' if `gcc' is in your PATH. INSTALL Program to use to install files. Default is `install' if you have it, `cp' otherwise. INCLUDEDIR Directory for `configure' to search for include files. Default is /usr/include. (For these variables, any value given in the environment is added to the value that `configure' chooses:) DEFS Configuration options, in the form '-Dfoo -Dbar ...' LIBS Libraries to link with, in the form '-lfoo -lbar ...' If you need to do unusual things to compile the package, we encourage you to teach `configure' how to do them and mail the diffs to the address given in the README so we can include them in the next release. 2. Type `make' to compile the package. 3. Type `make install' to install programs, data files, and documentation. 4. You can remove the program binaries and object files from the source directory by typing `make clean'. To also remove the Makefile(s), the header file containing system-dependent definitions (if the package uses one), and `config.status' (all the files that `configure' created), type `make distclean'. The file `configure.in' is used as a template to create `configure' by a program called `autoconf'. You will only need it if you want to regenerate `configure' using a newer version of `autoconf'.