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<refentry id="glib-building" revision="16 Jan 2002">
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<refentrytitle>Compiling the GLib package</refentrytitle>
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<manvolnum>3</manvolnum>
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<refmiscinfo>GLib Library</refmiscinfo>
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<refname>Compiling the GLib Package</refname>
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How to compile GLib itself
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<refsect1 id="building">
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<title>Building the Library on UNIX</title>
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On UNIX, GLib uses the standard GNU build system,
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using <application>autoconf</application> for package
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configuration and resolving portability issues,
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<application>automake</application> for building makefiles
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that comply with the GNU Coding Standards, and
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<application>libtool</application> for building shared
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libraries on multiple platforms. The normal sequence for
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compiling and installing the GLib library is thus:
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<userinput>./configure</userinput>
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<userinput>make</userinput>
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<userinput>make install</userinput>
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The standard options provided by <application>GNU
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autoconf</application> may be passed to the
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<command>configure</command> script. Please see the
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<application>autoconf</application> documentation or run
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<command>./configure --help</command> for information about
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The GTK+ documentation contains
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<ulink url="../gtk/gtk-building.html">further details</ulink>
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about the build process and ways to influence it.
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<refsect1 id="dependencies">
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<title>Dependencies</title>
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Before you can compile the GLib library, you need to have
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various other tools and libraries installed on your
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system. The two tools needed during the build process (as
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differentiated from the tools used in when creating GLib
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mentioned above such as <application>autoconf</application>)
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are <command>pkg-config</command> and GNU make.
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url="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/">pkg-config</ulink>
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is a tool for tracking the compilation flags needed for
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libraries that are used by the GLib library. (For each
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library, a small <literal>.pc</literal> text file is
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installed in a standard location that contains the compilation
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flags needed for that library along with version number
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information.) The version of <command>pkg-config</command>
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needed to build GLib is mirrored in the
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<filename>dependencies</filename> directory
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on the <ulink url="ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.2/">GTK+ FTP
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The GTK+ makefiles will mostly work with different versions
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of <command>make</command>, however, there tends to be
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a few incompatibilities, so the GTK+ team recommends
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installing <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/software/make">GNU
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make</ulink> if you don't already have it on your system
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and using it. (It may be called <command>gmake</command>
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rather than <command>make</command>.)
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GLib depends on a number of other libraries.
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The <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/">GNU
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libiconv library</ulink> is needed to build GLib if your
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system doesn't have the <function>iconv()</function>
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function for doing conversion between character
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encodings. Most modern systems should have
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<function>iconv()</function>, however many older systems lack
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an <function>iconv()</function> implementation. On such systems,
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you must install the libiconv library. This can be found at:
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<ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv">http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv</ulink>.
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If your system has an <function>iconv()</function> implementation but
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you want to use libiconv instead, you can pass the
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--with-libiconv option to configure. This forces
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Note that if you have libiconv installed in your default include
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search path (for instance, in <filename>/usr/local/</filename>), but
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don't enable it, you will get an error while compiling GLib because
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the <filename>iconv.h</filename> that libiconv installs hides the
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If you are using the native iconv implementation on Solaris
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instead of libiconv, you'll need to make sure that you have
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the converters between locale encodings and UTF-8 installed.
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At a minimum you'll need the SUNWuiu8 package. You probably
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should also install the SUNWciu8, SUNWhiu8, SUNWjiu8, and
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The native iconv on Compaq Tru64 doesn't contain support for
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UTF-8, so you'll need to use GNU libiconv instead. (When
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using GNU libiconv for GLib, you'll need to use GNU libiconv
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for GNU gettext as well.) This probably applies to related
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operating systems as well.
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The libintl library from the <ulink
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url="http://www.gtk.org/software/gettext">GNU gettext
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package</ulink> is needed if your system doesn't have the
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<function>gettext()</function> functionality for handling
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message translation databases.
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A thread implementation is needed, unless you want to compile GLib
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without thread support, which is not recommended. The thread support
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in GLib can be based upon several native thread implementations,
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e.g. POSIX threads, DCE threads or Solaris threads.
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<refsect1 id="extra-configuration-options">
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<title>Extra Configuration Options</title>
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In addition to the normal options, the
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<command>configure</command> script in the GLib
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library supports these additional arguments:
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<command>configure</command>
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<arg>--enable-debug=[no|minimum|yes]</arg>
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<arg>--disable-gc-friendly</arg>
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<arg>--enable-gc-friendly</arg>
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<arg>--disable-mem-pools</arg>
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<arg>--enable-mem-pools</arg>
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<arg>--disable-threads</arg>
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<arg>--enable-threads</arg>
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<arg>--with-threads=[none|posix|dce|win32]</arg>
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<arg>--disable-included-printf</arg>
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<arg>--enable-included-printf</arg>
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<arg>--disable-visibility</arg>
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<arg>--enable-visibility</arg>
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<arg>--disable-gtk-doc</arg>
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<arg>--enable-gtk-doc</arg>
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<arg>--disable-man</arg>
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<arg>--enable-man</arg>
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<title><systemitem>--enable-debug</systemitem></title>
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Turns on various amounts of debugging support. Setting this to 'no'
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disables g_assert(), g_return_if_fail(), g_return_val_if_fail() and
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all cast checks between different object types. Setting it to 'minimum' disables only cast checks. Setting it to 'yes' enables
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<link linkend="GLIB-Debug-Options">runtime debugging</link>.
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The default is 'minimum'.
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Note that 'no' is fast, but dangerous as it tends to destabilize
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even mostly bug-free software by changing the effect of many bugs
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from simple warnings into fatal crashes. Thus
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<option>--enable-debug=no</option> should <emphasis>not</emphasis>
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be used for stable releases of GLib.
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<title><systemitem>--disable-gc-friendly</systemitem> and
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<systemitem>--enable-gc-friendly</systemitem></title>
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By default, and with <systemitem>--disable-gc-friendly</systemitem>
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as well, Glib does not clear the memory for certain objects before they
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are freed. For example, Glib may decide to recycle GList nodes by
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putting them in a free list. However, memory profiling and debugging tools like <ulink
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url="http://www.valgrind.org">Valgrind</ulink> work better if an
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application does not keep dangling pointers to freed memory (even
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though these pointers are no longer dereferenced), or invalid pointers inside
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uninitialized memory. The
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<systemitem>--enable-gc-friendly</systemitem> option makes Glib clear
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memory in these situations:
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When shrinking a GArray, Glib will clear the memory no longer
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available in the array: shrink an array from 10 bytes to 7, and
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the last 3 bytes will be cleared. This includes removals of single and multiple elements.
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When growing a GArray, Glib will clear the new chunk of memory.
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Grow an array from 7 bytes to 10 bytes, and the last 3 bytes will be cleared.
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The above applies to GPtrArray as well.
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When freeing a node from a GHashTable, Glib will first clear
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the node, which used to have pointers to the key and the value
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When destroying or removing a GTree node, Glib will clear the node,
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which used to have pointers to the node's value, and the left and right subnodes.
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Since clearing the memory has a cost,
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<systemitem>--disable-gc-friendly</systemitem> is the default.
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<title><systemitem>--disable-mem-pools</systemitem> and
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<systemitem>--enable-mem-pools</systemitem></title>
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Many small chunks of memory are often allocated via collective pools
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in GLib and are cached after release to speed up reallocations.
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For sparse memory systems this behaviour is often inferior, so
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memory pools can be disabled to avoid excessive caching and force
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atomic maintenance of chunks through the <function>g_malloc()</function>
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and <function>g_free()</function> functions. Code currently affected by
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<structname>GList</structname>, <structname>GSList</structname>,
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<structname>GNode</structname>, <structname>GHash</structname>
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allocations. The functions g_list_push_allocator(),
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g_list_pop_allocator(), g_slist_push_allocator(),
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g_slist_pop_allocator(), g_node_push_allocator() and
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g_node_pop_allocator() are not available
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<structname>GMemChunk</structname>s become basically non-effective
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<structname>GSignal</structname> disables all caching (potentially
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<structname>GType</structname> doesn't honour the
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<structname>GTypeInfo</structname>
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<structfield>n_preallocs</structfield> field anymore
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the <structname>GBSearchArray</structname> flag
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<literal>G_BSEARCH_ALIGN_POWER2</literal> becomes non-functional
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<title><systemitem>--disable-threads</systemitem> and
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<systemitem>--enable-threads</systemitem></title>
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Do not compile GLib to be multi thread safe. GLib
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will be slightly faster then. This is however not
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recommended, as many programs rely on GLib being
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<title><systemitem>--with-threads</systemitem></title>
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Specify a thread implementation to use.
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'posix' and 'dce' can be used interchangeable
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to mean the different versions of Posix
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threads. configure tries to find out, which
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'none' means that GLib will be thread safe,
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but does not have a default thread
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implementation. This has to be supplied to
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<function>g_thread_init()</function> by the programmer.
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<title><systemitem>--disable-included-printf</systemitem> and
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<systemitem>--enable-included-printf</systemitem></title>
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By default the <command>configure</command> script will try
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to auto-detect whether the C library provides a suitable set
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of <function>printf()</function> functions. In detail,
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<command>configure</command> checks that the semantics of
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<function>snprintf()</function> are as specified by C99 and
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that positional parameters as specified in the Single Unix
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Specification are supported. If this not the case, GLib will
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include an implementation of the <function>printf()</function>
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These options can be used to explicitly control whether
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an implementation fo the <function>printf()</function> family
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should be included or not.
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<title><systemitem>--disable-visibility</systemitem> and
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<systemitem>--enable-visibility</systemitem></title>
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By default, GLib uses ELF visibility attributes to optimize
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PLT table entries if the compiler supports ELF visibility
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attributes. A side-effect of the way in which this is currently
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implemented is that any header change forces a full
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recompilation, and missing includes may go unnoticed.
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Therefore, it makes sense to turn this feature off while
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doing GLib development, even if the compiler supports ELF
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visibility attributes. The <option>--disable-visibility</option>
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option allows to do that.
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<title><systemitem>--disable-gtk-doc</systemitem> and
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<systemitem>--enable-gtk-doc</systemitem></title>
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By default the <command>configure</command> script will try
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to auto-detect whether the
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<application>gtk-doc</application> package is installed. If
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it is, then it will use it to extract and build the
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documentation for the GLib library. These options
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can be used to explicitly control whether
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<application>gtk-doc</application> should be
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used or not. If it is not used, the distributed,
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pre-generated HTML files will be installed instead of
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building them on your machine.
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<title><systemitem>--disable-man</systemitem> and
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<systemitem>--enable-man</systemitem></title>
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By default the <command>configure</command> script will try
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to auto-detect whether <application>xsltproc</application>
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and the necessary Docbook stylesheets are installed. If
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they are, then it will use them to rebuild the included
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man pages from the XML sources. These options can be used
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to explicitly control whether man pages should be rebuilt
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used or not. The distribution includes pre-generated man
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removed
docs/reference/glib/building.sgml
