path: root/INSTALL

                             Txr Installation Guide
                         Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com>

0. Overview

Txr's configure and build system takes into account various deployment
scenarios:

- the common case where a user compiles a program on a machine to be
  installed in some personal directory on that machine

- the case where a superuser compiles a program on a machine to be
  installed for everyone in /usr or /usr/local

- the situation where the software is compiled on one machine,
  in order to be installed at some intended path on another machine,
  which may have a different architecture.

In all scenarios, three things have to happen: successful build configuration,
successful compilation, installation of the program, and successful execution
of test cases.

Txr supports cross compiling.  The location of the toolchain components can be
specified. Furthermore, the script will try to compile some test programs to
detect the features of the target platform, but it does not execute text
programs, which is not possible when cross-compiling.  All tests are crafted to
avoid requiring execution of code.


1. Configuration

Configuration is done using the configure script. The configure script need not
be run in the source directory. The program can be built in a separate
directory, for instance like this:

  $ mkdir build-txr
  $ cd build-dir
  build-dir $ ../txr/configure

If you're going to be making changes to txr, it's easier to build in the
source directory, but to build txr for multiple architectures, or multiple
kinds of builds at the same time it's useful to follow the separate-directory
approach.

On that topic, note that TXR supports building optimized and unoptimized in the same tree;
using "make txr-dbg", you can build an optimized debug target. The regular
build places object files in the opt/ subdirectory; the unoptimized objects
are placed into dbg/.

Run configure --help to see an explanation of what options are available and
what are their default values. If you aren't cross-compiling, you probably
don't have to do anything.

If you're working on txr, you will likely at some point have to reconfigure the
opt_flags to disable compiler optimization for easier debugging with a
debugger.


1.1.  Make Syntax in Config Variables

You will find that the default values for some configuration variables contain
unexpanded Make syntax such as $(prefix).  This is because these variables
ultimately end up as make variables defined in config.make, and will be
expanded at make time. Using variables like $(prefix) in the definitions of
other variables creates a logical structure and configuration flexiblity. 
Change the prefix, and the variables dependent on prefix change accordingly.
By doing the expanding at make time rather than in the configure script,
there is an additional flexibility in that you can override the variables
when running make:

  # was configured for /usr/local but we can switch it
  # all variables whose values are based on $(prefix) will follow suit:
  make prefix=/usr install


1.1.  Cross-Compiling

When a program is being cross-compiled using a toolchain, there are two
important pieces of information needed. What is the path to the root directory
of the toolchain? And what are the relative paths or prefixes from the
toolchain to the compilers, and to the other tools?  These two may be
different.

In the txr configuration, the path to the toolchain can be set using
the cross variable, which is blank by default.  The prefix of the compiler is
given by the variable compiler_prefix, which also defaults to a blank value.
The compiler name is given by ccname, whose default value is "gcc".

The compiler, then is given by the cc variable, whose default value is
"$(cross)$(compiler_prefix)$(ccname)" and which make will thus
evaluate to "gcc".

Suppose you have a toolchain for ARM Linux whose bin directory is
/cross/arm-linux/bin/.  This could be used as the value of cross.

Suppose the compiler under this directory is arm-linux-gcc. Thus
for compiler_prefix you can use the string "arm-linux-"

The cc variable "$(cross)$(compiler_prefix)$(ccname)" will then
expand to "/cross/arm-linux/bin/arm-linux-gcc".

But what about other cross tools, like nm? It's possible that these have a
different prefix from the compiler. Therefore there is a separate variable
for these called tool_prefix. If you're setting cross and compiler_prefix,
you should also set tool_prefix.

Mind the slashes. If cross doesn't have a trailing slash, then
compiler_prefix and tool_prefix will have to have a leading slash.
These variables are just catenated together.


1.2.  Handling the .tl files in Cross-Compiling

During ordinary non-cross compilation, when the txr executable is built,
that executable is then used to compile numerous .tl files in the standard
library, producing .tlo files. These filesa are architecture-independent, and
therefore do not require cross-compiling per se; however, their dependency on
the txr executable poses a problem: if the txr executable is cross compiled, it
cannot be executed.

There are two solutions for this:

Solution 1: build a native txr for the build machine. Then simply copy
its .tlo files. Suppose the native TXR is built in a directory called
native-build, and the cross-compiled txr has been built in the cross-build
directory to the point that the executable exists. Simply:

   cp native-build/stdlib/*.tlo cross-build/stdlib

then change to the cross-build directory and continue the build with
make install.

Solution 2: build a native txr for the build machine. When building
the cross-compiled txr, use the TXR make variable to specify the native
executable:

   make TXR=/path/to/native/txr

The native txr should be the same version. If the version differs, the
cross-compilation might not work.

2. Prefix Selection

One configure variable you may need to set is --prefix. What is a prefix?
The prefix is the root directory of the software install, as ultimately seen on
the target system. The default prefix for txr is /usr/local. If you're
preparing txr for a Linux distribution as an official package, you probably
want to pick the prefix /usr. If you're making a private installation,
you use your home directory as the prefix. If your name is pat, then
--prefix=/home/pat (if your operating system has a /home directory
where user directories are located).  The program will then go into
/home/pat/bin, man pages will go into /home/pat/share/man, etc.

What the prefix is not: do not use the prefix to try to redirect txr to
install into a temporary directory.  The prefix is not the same thing as
the installation directory for the "make install" step! It is only
the same thing in the simple case where you're installing txr to
run on the same machine where it is built, and the DESTDIR variable is not
used.

When choosing the prefix, think only about where the program and its
other materials like man pages will live on the system where it will run.
Do not use the prefix variable to redirect the install to a temporary
directory.

If you're preparing a package for another system, the "make install"
step will have to be redirected to some temporary directory.
For that, there is the DESTDIR variable described later in this
guide.


3. Verifying the Configuration

This is something for expert users. If you're building Txr on some
exotic architecture on which nobody else is running it, you're on
your own. The configure script may have made some wrong choices.
The only way these will be identified is if someone who knows what
he or she is doing will check over the config.make file, and
especially the generated config.h header file. When in doubt,
post these to the txr mailing list: <txr-users@nongnu.org>.


4. Building

This is an automated process: just run "make". Hopefully, everthing
goes well and you end up with a "./txr" executable.


5. Verifying and Installing

Because of the garbage collection technique it uses, txr is a
compiler-sensitive program. It's a very good idea to verify an installation of
it by running the test suite---even if you're compiling it for a popular
architecture on which other users are already running it successfully.
Different revisions and installation of the compiler could make a difference.
If the test suite fails, please go straight to the mailing list.
If you're up to fixing the problem, read the HACKING guide.

If you're building txr for the same machine, you can run the test suite
using

  $ make tests

Then install it using

  $ make install

Of course to do this step, you may have to become superuser, depending
on where the prefix is!

However, if you built txr with a toolchain that is not for the
system you are building on, you cannot run the test suite on the
build machine. However, you can still run the tests on the target system.
The txr makefile has a special target which captures the test suite execution
steps into a script and packages up all the test materials:

  $ make install-tests

By default the tests are installed under the prefix in the
$(prefix)/share/txr/tests directory.  The generated test script is
called "run.sh". Here are the more-or-less exact steps to install
txr with a test suite in a temporary directory:

  $ mkdir install-dir
  $ make DESTDIR=install-dir install install-tests

Now you can package it up in some way, such as making a "tarball":

  $ tar -C install-dir -czvf txr-package.tar.gz .

A package created this way is intended to be extracted
from the root directory of the target systems. The install-dir
contains relative paths which correspond to absolute paths
on the target. For instance install-dir/usr/local/bin/txr.
By using -C install-dir, we tell tar to temporary switch to
the root directory and package up the files from that vantage point,
so the archive ends up with paths like ./usr/local/bin/txr.
As you can see, that has to be extracted from the / directory:

  on the target system
  # cd /
  # tar xzvf txr-package.tar.gz

Now you can run the test suite on the target:

  # /usr/local/share/txr/tests/run.sh

Of course, the /usr/local is the default prefix: substitute
the one you have picked, if it is different.

Everything should pass, otherwise you have a broken port. Please
report to the txr mailing list.

Good luck!