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-quartz --enable-atsui --enable-xcb --enable-glitz --enable-beos --enable-os2 --enable-directfb Some of cairo's backends are marked as experimental and will not be built by default. If you would like to build and experiment with these backends, you will need to pass one of the above options to the configure script. You may need to have certain libraries installed first as discussed in the dependencies section of the README file. --disable-xlib --disable-win32 --disable-png --disable-freetype --disable-ps --disable-pdf --disable-svg Cairo's configure script detects the libraries needed to build each stable backend, and when it finds them, enables each backend. If you would like to override this detection and disable a backend, (even when it would be possible to build it), use one of the options above to disable the backend. 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 (1.8 or newer) autoconf libtool 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 it's own utility called libtool which is not what you want, (the one you do want goes by the name of glibtool). 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!