[TOC]
If you compile wxWidgets on Linux for the first time and don't like to read install instructions just do the following in wxWidgets directory:
> mkdir buildgtk
> cd buildgtk
> ../configure --with-gtk
> make
> su <type root password>
> make install
> ldconfig
[if you get "ldconfig: command not found", try using "/sbin/ldconfig"]
If you don't do the 'make install' part, you can still use the libraries from the buildgtk directory, but they may not be available to other users.
If you want to remove wxWidgets on Unix you can do this:
> su <type root password>
> make uninstall
> ldconfig
Note that by default, GTK 3 is used. GTK 2 can be specified with --with-gtk=2.
If you use CMake, please see @ref overview_cmake for building wxWidgets using it.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
When sending bug reports tell us what version of wxWidgets you are using (including the beta) and what compiler on what system. One example: wxGTK 3.0.5, GCC 9.3.1, Fedora 31.
For any configure errors: please look at config.log
file which was generated
during configure run, it usually contains some useful information.
If configure reports that you don't have GTK installed, please
check that the appropriate development package is available on
your system and not just the GTK libraries themselves. You can
use pkg-config --modversion gtk+-3.0
(or 2.0
) to check that
this is the case.
You get errors from make: please use GNU make instead of the native make program. Currently wxWidgets can be built only with GNU make, BSD make and Solaris make. Other versions might work or not.
You get immediate crashes when starting any sample or application: This may be due to having compiled the library with different flags or compiler options than your program or using the headers from a different version of the library that is being used during run-time. If you have multiple versions of wxWidgets installed, please try uninstalling the ones you don't need and rebuilding.
Now create your super-application myfoo.cpp and compile anywhere with
g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --libs --cxxflags` -o myfoo
The normal build instructions should work fine on Cygwin. The one difference
with Cygwin is that when using the "--enable-shared" configure option (which
is the default) the API is exported explicitly using __declspec(dllexport)
rather than all global symbols being available.
This shouldn't make a difference using the library and should be a little
more efficient. However if an export attribute has been missed somewhere you
will see linking errors. If this happens then you can work around the
problem by setting LDFLAGS=-Wl,--export-all-symbols
. Please also let us know
about it on the wx-dev mailing list.
This section documents some of the most important configure
options. It is not exhaustive, please refer to configure --help
for the full list of options.
Note that the options documented below are given in the form indicating how to change the default behaviour, i.e. if it says "--disable-optimise" it means that optimizations are enabled by default.
All standard configure options are supported, e.g. you can choose
--prefix
to select the directory to install the libraries to.
Also note that cross-compiling is fully supported, just specify
the --host
option as usual (please refer to autoconf manual for
more information).
The following options can be used to specify the kind and number of libraries to build:
--disable-shared Do not create shared libraries, but
build static libraries instead.
--enable-monolithic Build wxWidgets as single library instead
of as several smaller libraries (which is
the default since wxWidgets 2.5.0).
Options for third party dependencies: wxWidgets may use other libraries present on the current system. For some of these libraries, wxWidgets also provides built-in versions, that can be linked into wx libraries themselves, which can be useful to minimize external dependencies.
--disable-sys-libs Don't use system libraries when there is
a built-in version included in wxWidgets.
Note that other system libraries can,
and typically will, still be used if
found.
--without-libpng Disables PNG image format code.
Don't use libpng (although GTK
itself still uses it).
--without-libjpeg Disables JPEG image format code.
Don't use libjpeg.
--without-libtiff Disables TIFF image format code.
Don't use libtiff.
--without-expat Disable XML classes based on Expat parser.
Don't use expat library.
--without-liblzma Disable LZMA compression support.
Don't use liblzma.
--without-libcurl Don't use libcurl even if it's available.
Disables wxWebRequest.
--without-opengl Disable OpenGL integration with wxGLCanvas.
Don't use OpenGL or EGL libraries.
--disable-glcanvasegl Disable EGL support even if it is available
(it would be used if it is, by default).
--disable-mediactrl Disable wxMediaCtrl.
Don't use GStreamer libraries.
--disable-webview Disable wxWebView.
Don't use webkit2gtk and its multiple
dependencies.
Normally, you won't have to choose a toolkit, because configure defaults to wxGTK anyhow. However you need to use this option to explicitly specify the version of GTK to use, e.g.:
--with-gtk=3 Use GTK 3. Default.
--with-gtk=2 Use GTK 2.
--with-gtk=1 Use GTK 1.2. Obsolete.
Some other general compilation options:
--disable-optimise Do not optimise the code. Can be useful
for debugging but shouldn't be used
for production builds.
--disable-unicode Disable Unicode support. Not recommended.
--enable-no_rtti Enable compilation without creation of
C++ RTTI information in object files.
This will speed-up compilation and reduce
binary size.
--enable-no_exceptions Enable compilation without creation of
C++ exception information in object files.
This will speed-up compilation and reduce
binary size.
--enable-debug_info Add debug info to object files and
executables for use with debuggers
such as gdb (or its many frontends).
--enable-debug_flag Define __DEBUG__ and __WXDEBUG__ when
compiling. This enable wxWidgets' very
useful internal debugging tricks (such
as automatically reporting illegal calls)
to work. Note that program and library
must be compiled with the same debug
options.
--enable-debug Same as --enable-debug_info and
--enable-debug_flag together. Unless you have
some very specific needs, you should use this
option instead of --enable-debug_info/flag ones
separately.
To reduce the final libraries (or executables, when linking statically) size, many wxWidgets features may be disabled. Here is a list of some of them:
--disable-pnm Disables PNM image format code.
--disable-gif Disables GIF image format code.
--disable-pcx Disables PCX image format code.
--disable-iff Disables IFF image format code.
--disable-resources Disables the use of *.wxr type resources.
--disable-threads Disables threads. Will also disable sockets.
--disable-sockets Disables sockets.
--disable-dnd Disables Drag'n'Drop.
--disable-clipboard Disables Clipboard.
--disable-streams Disables the wxStream classes.
--disable-file Disables the wxFile class.
--disable-textfile Disables the wxTextFile class.
--disable-intl Disables the internationalisation.
--disable-validators Disables validators.
Please remember that the full list of options can be seen in
configure --help
output.
After running configure, just run make
from the same directory.
Building can take some time and it's strongly recommended to use
--jobs
option with GNU make, e.g. make -j8
if you have 8
logical CPU cores.
Then you may install the library and its header files under
/usr/local/include/wx
and /usr/local/lib
respectively. You
have to perform the following command as root, using either su
or sudo
:
make install
After installing, you can run make clean
in the original
directory or just remove it entirely if you don't plan to build
wxWidgets again in the near future.
Note that installing the library is not required and it can
also be used from the build directory by simply specifying the
full path to wx-config
script located in it when building your
application.
You need to use the compilation flags returned by wx-config --cxxflags
and linking flags returned by wx-config --libs
,
which may be combined into a single invocation:
g++ myfoo.cpp `wx-config --cxxflags --libs` -o myfoo
A simple makefile for a program using wxWidgets could be written
in the following way (note that if you are copying and pasting
this into your makefile, the leading spaces must be replaced by a
TAB
character):
program: program.o
$(CXX) -o program program.o `wx-config --libs`
program.o: program.cpp
$(CXX) `wx-config --cxxflags` -c program.cpp -o program.o
clean:
$(RM) program.o program
.PHONY: clean
If your application uses only some of wxWidgets libraries, you can
specify required libraries when running wx-config. For example,
wx-config --libs=html,core
will only output link command to link
with libraries required by core GUI classes and wxHTML classes. See
the manual for more information on the libraries.