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. 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 --enable-ps --enable-pdf --enable-quartz --enable-atsui --enable-xcb --enable-glitz --enable-beos 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 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 acquite root access in order to perform this operation. A good way to do this is to use the sudo program: sudo make install