Building the X Window System from the X.Org Monolithic Source Distribution Jim Gettys and Keith Packard (for X11R6.9) David Dawes and Matthieu Herrb (for XFree86 4.4 RC2) 21 December 2005 Abstract This document describes how to build the X Window System from the X.Org monolithic source distribution and is designed to be used in conjunction with the operating system (OS) specific README files. NOTE: Refer to the appropriate OS-specific README file in xc/pro- grams/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc before attempting to build the X dis- tribution. These files often contain additional information that you need to successfully build for your OS. We highly recommend using gcc to build the X distribution, but X also gener- ally builds with the native compiler for each OS platform; The build tools known to be required include: gcc, make, C library development package, bi- son, flex, ncurses (development package), and Perl. The monolithic tree also includes copies of some packages maintained outside the X.Org project for convenience in building on machines that do not already have them installed. These include FreeType 2, fontconfig, expat, xterm, and zlib. For most uses however, it is recommended that you install the latest version directly from the main distribution site, or use the packages provided in your operating system, as they are more likely to be up to date with the latest bug fixes and security patches. Depending on your platform, use of the bundled versions may be enabled or disabled by default, check the Imake configuration files for your platform in xc/config/cf to find out. To override the defaults for your platform or to set the path to the installa- tion location, see the instructions below on configuring the source via xorgsite.def and host.def. X11R6.9 depends on the following external packages: +-------------+----------------+-----------+ |Package Name | Version | Included? | +-------------+----------------+-----------+ |expat | 1.95.8 | Yes | |fontconfig | 2.2 or newer | Yes | |FreeType | 2.1.8 or 2.1.9 | Yes | |libdrm | 2.0 | Yes | |libpng | 1.2.8 | No | |Mesa | 6.4.1 | Yes | |xterm | Patch 207 | Yes | |zlib | 1.1.4 or 1.2.3 | Yes | +-------------+----------------+-----------+ You can find more information and/or the original sources for these packages at their project websites at these URL's: +-------------+-------------------------------------------+ |Package Name | Website | +-------------+-------------------------------------------+ |expat | http://expat.sourceforge.net/ | |fontconfig | http://www.fontconfig.org/ | |FreeType | http://www.freetype.org/ | |libdrm | http://dri.freedesktop.org/libdrm/ | |libpng | http://www.libpng.com/pub/png/libpng.html | |Mesa | http://www.mesa3d.org/ | |xterm | http://dickey.his.com/xterm/xterm.html | |zlib | http://www.zlib.net/ | +-------------+-------------------------------------------+ 1. How to get the X11R6.9 distribution source One way of getting the X11R6.9 source is to obtain it directly from the X.Org CVS repository. There are several ways of doing that, and they are described in the CVS section of our wiki The CVS tag for this release is "XORG-6_9_0". The tag for the maintenance branch for this release is "XORG-6_9-branch". Another method of getting the X11R6.9 source is to either download the 6.9.0 source tarballs sites from freedesktop.org using either ftp or http. The procedure for this is as follows: o The X11R6.9 source is contained in the files: X11R6.9.0-src1.tar.gz X11R6.9.0-src2.tar.gz X11R6.9.0-src3.tar.gz X11R6.9.0-src4.tar.gz X11R6.9.0-src5.tar.gz X11R6.9.0-src6.tar.gz X11R6.9.0-src7.tar.gz These can be found at ftp://ftp.freedesk- top.org/xorg/releases/X11R6.9/src/ or http://xorg.freedesk- top.org/releases/X11R6.9/src/ and similar locations on X.Org mirror sites. X11R6.9.0-src4.tgz and X11R6.9.0-src5.tar.gz contains the fonts. X11R6.9.0-src6.tar.gz contains the documentation source. X11R6.9.0-src7.tar.gz contains the hardcopy documentation. X11R6.9.0-src1.tar.gz, X11R6.9.0-src2.tar.gz and X11R6.9.0-src3.tar.gz contains everything else. If you don't need the docs or fonts you can get by with only X11R6.9.0-src1.tar.gz, X11R6.9.0-src2.tar.gz and X11R6.9.0-src3.tar.gz. o Extract each of these files by running the following from a directory on a filesystem containing enough space (the full source requires around 305MB, and a similar amount is required in addition to this for the com- piled binaries): gzip -d < X11R6.9.0-src1.tar.gz | tar vxf - gzip -d < X11R6.9.0-src2.tar.gz | tar vxf - gzip -d < X11R6.9.0-src3.tar.gz | tar vxf - gzip -d < X11R6.9.0-src4.tar.gz | tar vxf - gzip -d < X11R6.9.0-src5.tar.gz | tar vxf - gzip -d < X11R6.9.0-src6.tar.gz | tar vxf - gzip -d < X11R6.9.0-src7.tar.gz | tar vxf - All methods will produce one main source directory called xc. 2. Configuring the source before building In most cases it shouldn't be necessary to configure anything before build- ing. If you do want to make configuration changes, it is recommended that you start by going to the xc/config/cf directory, and copying the file xorgsite.def to host.def. Then read through the host.def file (which is heavily commented), and set your configuration parameters. Usually you can find the default settings by checking the .cf file(s) relevant to your OS. A good rule to follow is only to change things that you understand as it's easy to create build problems by changing the default configuration. Many of the configuration parameters are described in the xc/config/cf/README. If you are using just the X11R6.9.0-src1.tar.gz, X11R6.9.0-src2.tar.gz and X11R6.9.0-src3.tar.gz parts of the source dist, you will need to define BuildFonts to NO. 3. Using a shadow directory of symbolic links for the build A recommended practice is to use a shadow directory of symbolic links to do the build of X11R6.9 as this allows you to keep the source directory unmodi- fied during the build. It has the following benefits: o When you are using CVS to maintain your source tree, the update process is not disturbed by foreign files not under CVS's control. o It is possible to build X11R6.9 for several different Operating System or architectures from the same sources, shared by read-only NFS mounts. o It is possible to build X11R6.9 with different configuration options, by putting a real copy of the host.def file in each build tree and by cus- tomizing it separately in each build tree. To make a shadow directory of symbolic links, use the following steps: o create the directory at the top of the build tree. It is often created at the same level that the xc directory, but this is not mandatory. cd the directory containing the xcdirectory mkdir build o use the "lndir" command to make the shadow tree: lndir ../xc Note that you can refer to the xc directory with an absolute path if needed. See the lndir(1) manual page for details. If lndir is not already installed on your system, you can build it manually from the X11R6.9 sources by running the following commands: cd xc/config/util make -f Makefile.ini lndir cp lndir some directory in your PATH Occasionally there may be stale links in the build tree, like when files in the source tree are removed or renamed. These can be cleaned up by running the "cleanlinks" script from the build directory (see the cleanlinks(1) man- ual page). Rarely there will be changes that will require the build tree to be re-created from scratch. A symptom of this can be mysterious build prob- lems. The best solution for this is to remove the build tree, and then re- create it using the steps outlined above. 4. Building and installing the distribution Before building the distribution, read through the OS-specific README file in xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/doc that is relevant to you. Once you have addressed the OS-specific details, go your build directory (either the xc directory or the shadow tree created before) and run "make World" with the BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS set as described in the OS-specific README (if necessary, but most systems supported by X11R6.9 don't need BOOTSTRAPCFLAGS). It is advis- able to redirect stdout and stderr to World.log so that you can track down problems that might occur during the build. With Bourne-like shells (Bash, the Korn shell, zsh, etc.) use a command like: make World > World.log 2>&1 Witch C-shell variants (csh, tcsh, etc), use: make World >& World.log You can follow the progress of the build by running: tail -f World.log in a terminal. When the build is finished, you should check the World.Log file to see if there were any problems. If there weren't any then you can install the bina- ries. By default the "make World" process will exit at the first error. To restart the build process after correcting the problems, just run 'make'. If Imakefiles or part of the build configuration was changed as part of correct- ing the problem, either re-run "make World", or run "make Everything". If you would prefer "make World" to ignore errors and build as much as possi- ble, run it in the following way instead of the way described above: for Bourne-like shells: make WORLDOPTS=-k World > World.log 2>&1 for C-shell variants: make WORLDOPTS=-k World >& World.log To do the install, run "make install" and "make install.man". Make sure you have enough space in /usr/X11R6 for the install to succeed. If you want to install on a filesystem other than /usr, make a symbolic link to /usr/X11R6 before installing. To install the tree into a different directory than /usr/X11R6 you can specify DESTDIR: make install DESTDIR= make install.man DESTDIR= Cross compiling is supported if the appropriate config files for your target platforms exist. You must have the compiler toolchain installed for your tar- get platform and the C-compiler must know where those tools exist. To inform the build system where your cross compiler is located set the make variable CROSSCOMPILEDIR to the directory where the toolchain binaries are installed. make World CROSSCOMPILEDIR=""; . 5. Reconfiguring the server (source distribution) To build a different set of servers or servers with a different set of drivers installed: 1. Make sure the source for any new drivers is in the correct place (e.g., driver source should be in a subdirectory of xc/pro- grams/Xserver/hw/xfree86/drivers). 2. Change the settings of the server defines in host.def to specify which servers you wish to build. Also, change the driver lists to suit your needs. 3. From xc/programs/Xserver, run: make Makefile make Makefiles make includes make depend make 6. Other useful make targets There are some other useful targets defined in the top level Makefile of X11R6.9: o Everything after a make World, make Everything does everything a make World does, except the cleaning of the tree. It is a way to quickly rebuild the tree after a source patch, but it is not 100% bullet proof. There are cases were it is better to force a full build by using make World. o clean does a partial cleaning of the source tree. Removes object files and generated manual pages, but leaves the Makefiles and the generated dependencies files in place. After a make clean you need to re-run make includes make depend make to rebuild the X11R6.9. o distclean does a full cleaning of the source tree, removing all gener- ated files. After a make distclean, make World is the only option to rebuild X11R6.9. o includes generates all generated header files and in-tree symbolic links needed by the build. These files are removed by a make clean. o depend recomputes the dependencies for the various targets in all Make- files. Depending on the operating system, the dependencies are stored in the Makefile, or as a separate file, called .depend. This target needs the generated include files produced by make includes. o VerifyOS displays the detected operating system version. If the numbers shown do not match your system, you probably need to set them manually in host.def and report the problem to Xorg via our bug database at X.Org Bug Database or via email at . Generated from Id: BUILD.sgml,v 1.10 alanc Exp $ $XdotOrg: xc/BUILD,v 1.7 2005/12/21 05:39:04 kem Exp $