Quick-start build instructions ------------------------------ 1) Configure the package: ./configure 2) Compile it: make 3) Install it: make install This final step may require temporary root access (eg. with sudo) if you don't have write permission to the directory in which cairo will be installed. NOTE: If you are working with source from git/cvs rather than from a tar file, then you should use ./autogen.sh in place of ./configure anywhere it is mentioned in these instructions. More detailed build instructions -------------------------------- 1) Configure the package The first step in building cairo is to configure the package by running the configure script. [Note: if you don't have a configure script, skip down below to the Extremely detailed build instructions.] The configure script attempts to automatically detect as much as possible about your system. So, you should primarily just accept its defaults by running: ./configure The configure script does accept a large number of options for fine-tuning its behavior. See "./configure --help" for a complete list. The most commonly used options are discussed here. --prefix=PREFIX This option specifies the directory under which the software should be installed. By default configure will choose a directory such as /usr/local. If you would like to install cairo to some other location, pass the director to configure with the --prefix option. For example: ./configure --prefix=/opt/cairo would install cairo into the /opt/cairo directory. You could also choose a prefix directory within your home directory if you don't have write access to any system-wide directory. After installing into a custom prefix, you will need to set some environment variables to allow the software to be found. Assuming the /opt/cairo prefix and assuming you are using the bash shell, the following environment variables should be set: PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/cairo/lib/pkgconfig LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/cairo/lib export PKG_CONFIG_PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH (NOTE: On Mac OS X, at least, use DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH in place of LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.) --enable-XYZ --enable-XYZ=yes --enable-XYZ=auto --enable-XYZ=no --disable-XYZ Cairo's various font and surface backends and other features can be enabled or disabled at configure time. Features can be divided into three categories based on their default state: * default=yes: These are the recommended features like PNG functions and PS/PDF/SVG backends. It is highly recommended to not disable these features but if that's really what one wants, they can be disabled using --disable-XYZ. * default=auto: These are the "native" features, that is, they are platform specific, like the Xlib surface backend. You probably want one or two of these. They will be automatically enabled if all their required facilities are available. Or you can use --enable-XYZ or --disable-XYZ to make your desire clear, and then cairo errs during configure if your intention cannot be followed. * default=no: These are the "experimental" features, and hence by default off. Use --enabled-XYZ to enable them. The list of all features and their default state can be seen in the output of ./configure --help. 2) Compile the package: This step is very simple. Just: make The Makefiles included with cairo are designed to work on as many different systems as possible. When cairo is compiled, you can also run some automated tests of cairo with: make check NOTE: Some versions of X servers will cause the -xlib tests to report failures in make check even when cairo is working just fine. If you see failures in nothing but -xlib tests, please examine the corresponding -xlib-out.png images and compare them to the -ref.png reference images (the -xlib-diff.png images might also be useful). If the results seem "close enough" please do not report a bug against cairo as the "failures" you are seeing are just due to subtle variations in X server implementations. 3) Install the package: The final step is to install the package with: make install If you are installing to a system-wide location you may need to temporarily acquire root access in order to perform this operation. A good way to do this is to use the sudo program: sudo make install Extremely detailed build instructions ------------------------------------- So you want to build cairo but it didn't come with a configure script. This is probably because you have checked out the latest in-development code via git. If you need to be on the bleeding edge, (for example, because you're wanting to develop some aspect of cairo itself), then you're in the right place and should read on. However, if you don't need such a bleeding-edge version of cairo, then you might prefer to start by building the latest stable cairo release: http://cairographics.org/releases or perhaps the latest (unstable) development snapshot: http://cairographics.org/snapshots There you'll find nicely packaged tar files that include a configure script so you can go back the the simpler instructions above. But you're still reading, so you're someone that loves to learn. Excellent! We hope you'll learn enough to make some excellent contributions to cairo. Since you're not using a packaged tar file, you're going to need some additional tools beyond just a C compiler in order to compile cairo. Specifically, you need the following utilities: automake autoconf autoheader aclocal libtoolize pkg-config [at least version 0.16] gtk-doc (recommended) Hopefully your platform of choice has packages readily available so that you can easily install things with your system's package management tool, (such as "apt-get install automake" on Debian or "yum install automake" on Fedora, etc.). Note that Mac OS X ships with glibtoolize instead of libtoolize. Once you have all of those packages installed, the next step is to run the autogen.sh script. That can be as simple as: ./autogen.sh But before you run that command, note that the autogen.sh script accepts all the same arguments as the configure script, (and in fact, will generate the configure script and run it with the arguments you provide). So go back up to step (1) above and see what additional arguments you might want to pass, (such as prefix). Then continue with the instructions, simply using ./autogen.sh in place of ./configure. Happy hacking!