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Installing LessTif

Introduction

The original version of this document is written in HTML; the LessTif build process uses one of the text mode web browsers lynx or links to convert it into plain text. Both the HTML (doc/www.lesstif.org/INSTALL.html) and the plain text (Install) formats should be in a distribution.

Readers that are going to install a binary version of LessTif can jump to the according section immediately.

Table of contents

• Building LessTif
  • Prerequisites (What you need to compile LessTif)
  • Configuring LessTif
    
    • LessTif from CVS
    • LessTif source distribution
    • Getting configure to find everything
    • Using configure options to tune the build
  • Compiling LessTif
  • Platform specific issues
    
    • OSF, Digital Unix, Tru64
    • HP/UX
    • OS/2
    • Solaris
    • Windows
• Installing LessTif Binaries
  
  • LessTif built from source
  • Binary distributions of LessTif
  • Platform specific issues
    • FreeBSD
    • Linux
    • OS/2
    • Windows
  • After LessTif (Getting shared libraries to work)
• Upgrading LessTif
  
  • Default Versions
  • Installation Tree
• Xlt and Xbae

Building LessTif

Prerequisites (What you need to compile LessTif)

• C development system including an ANSI C89 (or better) compiler such as gcc and an according C library
• the make build tool
• X Window System (X11 Release 6 or higher; R5 might still work as well): libraries and headers
• some UN*X standard tools, like cp, cp, install, rm, sed

• autoconf
• automake
• libtool
• yacc (GNU bison)
• (f)lex

A large variety of systems fulfill these requirements as our (incomplete!) list of supported platforms shows. And installing the missing software shouldn't be too hard (except for the compiler and X11, perhaps ;-)

Configuring LessTif

Configuration of LessTif is now handled by automake, autoconf and libtool. They are GNU development tools which the LessTif developers use to generate the distribution's build scripts and makefiles. Normally this shouldn't bother you. The end result is that there are a bunch of Makefile.in files, and a "configure" script.

If you obtained a copy of LessTif from our CVS repository, then you need to perform some additional steps which will create the configure script and all the Makefile.in files. configure is a shell script which is meant to be run by people who compile LessTif (you, probably). It looks at your system and tries to figure out how exactly to compile. It may need a little help through command-line options, though.

LessTif from CVS

If you obtained your LessTif sources directly from CVS, you'll have to perform some of the steps which the LessTif developers normally perform when creating a distribution. (So, if you did get a real distribution you don't need to do this and you can go on to the next section.)

The following table lists the current versions of the auto* tools which we use currently for development. Note that the latest official release may still be based on a different set!

Tool	Version
automake	1.5
autoconf	2.52 (2.13 does work as well)
libtool	1.4.2

We have two places where you need to run the auto* commands. These are

• $LESSTIF (the main directory)
• $LESSTIF/test (large number of tests for our libraries)

The whole process of running the auto tools and make is now automated by the CVSMake script which is present in LessTif's top directory. Use of CVSMake is mandatory! Don't bother us if you run the auto* tools in your own way and run into problems afterwards ...
Note that due to a bug in current versions of those tools you may see an error or warning message while running CVSMake. (In some versions, it'll complain about installing some files in the LessTif directories, in other versions, it says AC_PROG_LEX is called multiple times.)
If things run well afterwards you may ignore this, of course. (so please try to continue first!)

CVSMake needs to be run in the top source directory of LessTif, it figures out which directories need its attention and then does its thing. After running CVSMake, the source tree should be ready for running the configure command.

The CVSMake scripts now feature some command line flags which may be useful:

• clean by default CVSMake cleans up a couple of files in the current toplevel directory. If this flag is specified it tries to run make maintainer-clean
• local - if applied to the toplevel CVSMake it won't run recurse into the non-core directories (test/)
• nodist - enables generation of dependencies in Makefiles. This does only work on systems which are supported by GNU automake/libtool. Starting with automake 1.5 finally more compilers than just gcc are supported!

Note that you may get a warning about the INSTALL file missing in some cases. Don't worry, it is now a generated file. If you have Lynx/links on your system, it'll convert doc/INSTALL.html into INSTALL. This only happens during the build process (and we're now in the configuration phase which is still before the build); that's why you can get this message. By the way: it's harmless.

The commands above are also the commands that you need to run if you have modified some of the Makefiles yourself.

Once you've done all the above, you can continue with the next section.

LessTif source distribution

To configure LessTif for your system, just type 'configure'. This should do a reasonable job of locating the stuff it needs, and gives rather verbose output should something fail.

The configure script has a lot of command line options which you might need or want to use for two main reasons :

• the configure program doesn't work (well) for you
• you want to tune the LessTif build process

You can type

        configure --help

Getting configure to find everything

• X11R5/R6/R6.x headers and libraries
• Motif® headers and libraries (optional)

Now many people who have Motif® on their system don't use LessTif. Hmm. Wonder why that is. Anyway, it wouldn't make much sense if you needed Motif® in order to build LessTif. The good news is : you don't need it. The only reason why you can tell configure where to find Motif® is so it can configure the Makefiles under test/ to be capable of building LessTif as well as Motif® tests.

configure will tell you where it has found them if it found them. If it didn't find X, you'll have to specify the path on configure's command line. Use these two options:

--x-includes
--x-libraries

And to specify the Motif® stuff, use these:

--with-motif-includes
--with-motif-libraries

configure --x-includes=/usr/local/X11R6/include

Using configure options to tune the build

So if you actually install multiple versions of our libraries the highest one will finally be the default version.

Choosing which versions to compile

--enable-build-12

build Motif-1.2 compatible version

--enable-build-20

build Motif-2.0 compatible version

--enable-build-21

build Motif-2.1 compatible version (enabled by default)

Other options

--enable-shared

build shared libraries [default=yes]

--enable-static

build static libraries [default=no]

--with-dmalloc

use dmalloc (see dmalloc.com)

--enable-maintainer-mode

enable make rules and dependencies not useful (and sometimes confusing) to the casual installer [default=no]

--enable-debug

build LessTif with debugging options [default]

--enable-editres

build LessTif with support for Editres protocol [default]

--enable-nonstandard-conversions

include nonstandard conversions [default=yes]

--enable-production

build a production version (doesn't include _LtDebug*() calls which print all kinds of debugging info depending on some environment variables)

--enable-scrollbar-verbose

configure LessTif ScrollBar to be verbose [default=no]

--enable-verbose

configure LessTif to be verbose [default=yes]

--prefix=XXX

tell configure where LessTif should be installed by "make install"

Compiling LessTif

Some combinations of compilers and libraries may have code generation bugs. For example, gcc-2.7.0 on a Solaris platform has known problems if the library is compiled with an optimization greater than -O (-O1). If you see weird problems when you debug library code, try a lower (or no) optimization. For the vast majority who compile with the default flags (-g for GNU-C), this is not an issue.

Platform specific issues

OSF, Digital Unix, Tru64

CC="cc -std1" LEX="/usr/local/bin/flex" ./configure

HP/UX

    CC="cc -Ae"
    export CC
    ./configure --disable-static

OS/2

Solaris

#define FUNCPROTO 1
#include <X11/Xfuncproto.h>

Windows

LessTif compiles almost out of the box under Cygwin. However you will need to install XFree86 4.x or higher from http://xfree86.cygwin.com

For U/WIN you will need to install GCC, libtools, automake, and autoconf etc. Please check the URL ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/uwin/.

For Interix, you will need GCC from Microsoft Interix URL. After installing GCC, download automake, autoconf and libtools, compile and install them.

Installing LessTif Binaries

LessTif built from source

Binary distributions of LessTif

Binary versions usually exist for Linux (various versions), FreeBSD and OS/2, others may be created occasionally as well, e.g. Windows binaries based on Cygwin.

Specifically for Linux, the binaries that we provide are RPM files. A LessTif release has more than one RPM file, each containing a part of LessTif. The Download page explains the difference between them. Important to know is that the "main" RPM is really only a runtime, whereas the stuff needed for development is in a separate RPM.

Platform specific issues

FreeBSD

Starting with the 0.80a (0.80 pre-release), the FreeBSD binary distribution is provided as a pkg_add installable file.

Pkg_add(8) is FreeBSD's installation tool.

Installation of LessTif with pkg_add creates a directory /usr/lesstif, under which all of LessTif is placed. As the file /usr/lesstif/README explains, you should put /usr/lesstif/bin in your $path, add /usr/lesstif/lib to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH or to the options of ldconfig in /etc/rc, and point your compiler to include files and libraries by adding

    -I/usr/lesstif/include -L/usr/lesstif/lib

Linux

From Matthew Simpson (matthewsimpson@home.com)

LessTif Binary Installation

The following procedure worked for installing the binary version 0.82 LessTif onto my Redhat 4.2 Linux system. I did not have a previous installation of either the source or binary LessTif, so this works from scratch. I am documenting this days later, so please correct as needed. The binary installation is simple:

1. After downloading the binary distribution, log in as root and place the file in /usr
2. gunzip it: gunzip lesstif-0.82-linux.tar.gz
3. untar it: tar -xvf lesstif-0.82-linux.tar The result will be this directory: /usr/lesstif
4. Remove the tar file if desired: rm lesstif-0.82-linux.tar
5. Edit /etc/ld.so.conf and add the following line for the untarred LessTif library:

   /usr/lesstif/lib
   

6. Run this: ldconfig

   LessTif Window Manager:

   To ignore your default window manager and instead load mwm, make or copy these files as yourself or root (whichever you use) to your home directory:

7. Put a .xinitrc file in your home directory. Add this to the last line, replacing the call to any other window manager:

   eval "exec /usr/lesstif/bin/mwm" 
   

   Or for better tracking, use this line instead:

   eval "exec /usr/lesstif/bin/mwm" -debug >"$HOME"/.MWM-errors 2>&1
   

   (The redirections rules for > and 2>&1 syntax are specific to sh, which is what my startx script uses. The rules are slightly different for tcsh.) This will dump any errors to a file in your home directory called .MWM-errors. If no errors occur, this file will not get created. If this file already exists, new errors will be appended to it. To get a new file each time you log in or start X, add this to your .login or startx file:

   rm -f $HOME/.MWM-errors 
   

   To automatically execute your window manager upon login, add this to the end of your .login file (this is using tcsh syntax):

   if ( ! -e /tmp/.X0-lock ) then
   echo "Starting X Windows..."
   rm -f $HOME/.MWM-errors
   startx
   endif
   

8. Copy this:
   cp /usr/lesstif/lib/X11/app-defaults/Mwm .
   This is where you set your personal app-defaults. Uncomment the lines mentioned at the end of this file to get some pretty borders. Here are some other things I changed: Double clicking an icon was set too fast. To slow it down:
   Mwm*doubleClickTime: 1000
   To allow automatic window focus whenever the mouse pointer hits it:
   Mwm*keyboardFocusPolicy: pointer
9. Copy this to your home directory:
   cp /usr/lesstif/lib/X11/mwm/system.mwmrc .mwmrc
   (Note that you should rename it from system.mwmrc to .mwmrc) This is where you set up your personal root menus. If you use XFree86, look in /usr/X11R6/bin for most of the already-installed applications you like to execute through the root window pull-down menus. More menus and sub-menus can be added as desired. Since /usr/X11R6/bin is in your path, you need not type the full path names into .mwmrc. Applications in other directories will need paths or soft links set up.

   When setting up these two files I did not have a LessTif mwm manual page available. However, if you have Unix and Motif® available at work (such as on SGI products), just do a man mwm and print it out for reference. Most will apply to LessTif mwm. (Even though SGI uses their own version called 4Dwm, they still provide the mwm manual pages with the IRIX 6.2 release.)

10. run startx

Matt Simpson

OS/2

Windows

cd /
bunzip2 lesstif-0.92.98.tar.bz2
tar xvf lesstif-0.92.98.tar

After LessTif (Getting shared libraries to work)

• Linux
  There are two ways to have shared libraries available under linux:
  • Use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.
  • Use ldconfig.
  The second option is only available to those with superuser access, so if you don't, or you specifically want to use the library that was just built (for running the tests), use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable.

  The LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable is to contain a colon separated list of paths to be searched for shared libraries. This variable is consulted before the information compiled by ldconfig, so even if you have LessTif already installed on your system you can use this variable to force the use of the newly built library.

  An example setting for LD_LIBRARY_PATH:

  $ LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/toshok/lesstif/libXm:/home/toshok/lesstif/libMrm
  $ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  

  If you have superuser access and want LessTif to be installed for system- wide use, make sure the directory to which the libraries were installed is listed in /etc/ld.so.conf. Then (as root) type

  ldconfig -v

  to make them available.

  If you're not sure which library is being used (either the system-wide installed one, or one you've just compiled), use the 'ldd' command. After generating an executable linked dynamically with LessTif, type ldd <executable-name>. This will output a list of the paths to all the shared libraries this executable depends on.

• HPUX 9
  Nothing additional needs to be done. Just make sure the linker can find the libraries when generating the executable (the -L flag).
• NetBSD/FreeBSD/OpenBSD
  Same as for Linux.

Upgrading LessTif

Default versions

Installation Tree

To simplify this whole process for the maintainers (who have to deal with all the bug reports ;-) and to enhance portability we abandoned this approach. We now install directly in the proper directories below $(prefix) and only put documentation and non-Motif standard stuff in $(prefix)/LessTif.

Having said this we have to acknowledge that upgrading an older release to 0.93.5 (or better) may fail for some reasons: installation tools may fail or refuse to remove the old symbolic links to now obsolete locations. So before doing the upgrade remove your whole old $(prefix)/LessTif tree and in addition the following symbolic links (if they exist) below $(prefix). However ensure that you know und understand what you are doing, don't remove a non-LessTif installation this way! (e.g. if your system has libraries with a different extension than .so those links were not created by a LessTif installation from sources, but perhaps a very different installation!)

bin/mwm
bin/uil
bin/xmbind
include/Dt
include/Mrm
include/Xm
include/uil
lib/libDt.so*
lib/libDtPrint.so*
lib/libMrm.so*
lib/libUil.so*
lib/libXm.so*

Xlt and Xbae

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Last modified on $Date: 2001/11/24 14:06:37 $