path: root/INSTALL

Library Maintenance
*******************

How to Install the GNU C Library
================================

   Installation of the GNU C library is relatively simple, but usually
requires several GNU tools to be installed already.

   To configure the GNU C library for your system, run the shell script
`configure' with `sh'.  Use an argument which is the conventional GNU
name for your system configuration--for example, `sparc-sun-sunos4.1',
for a Sun 4 running SunOS 4.1.  *Note Installation:
(gcc.info)Installation, for a full description of standard GNU
configuration names.  If you omit the configuration name, `configure'
will try to guess one for you by inspecting the system it is running
on.  It may or may not be able to come up with a guess, and the its
guess might be wrong.  `configure' will tell you the canonical name of
the chosen configuration before proceeding.

   Here are some options that you should specify (if appropriate) when
you run `configure':

`--with-gnu-ld'
     Use this option if you plan to use GNU `ld' to link programs with
     the GNU C Library.  (We strongly recommend that you do.)  This
     option enables use of features that exist only in GNU `ld'; so if
     you configure for GNU `ld' you must use GNU `ld' *every time* you
     link with the GNU C Library, and when building it.

`--with-gnu-as'
     Use this option if you plan to use the GNU assembler, `gas', when
     building the GNU C Library.  On some systems, the library may not
     build properly if you do *not* use `gas'.

`--with-gnu-binutils'
     This option implies both `--with-gnu-ld' and `--with-gnu-as'.  On
     systems where GNU tools are the system tools, there is no need to
     specify this option.  These include GNU, GNU/Linux, and free BSD
     systems.

`--without-fp'
`--nfp'
     Use this option if your computer lacks hardware floating-point
     support.

`--prefix=DIRECTORY'
     Install machine-independent data files in subdirectories of
     `DIRECTORY'.  (You can also set this in `configparms'; see below.)

`--exec-prefix=DIRECTORY'
     Install the library and other machine-dependent files in
     subdirectories of `DIRECTORY'.  (You can also set this in
     `configparms'; see below.)

`--enable-shared'
`--disable-shared'
     Enable or disable building of an ELF shared library on systems that
     support it.  The default is to build the shared library on systems
     using ELF when the GNU `binutils' are available.

`--enable-profile'
`--disable-profile'
     Enable or disable building of the profiled C library, `-lc_p'.  The
     default is to build the profiled library.  You may wish to disable
     it if you don't plan to do profiling, because it doubles the build
     time of compiling just the unprofiled static library.

`--enable-omitfp'
     Enable building a highly-optimized but possibly undebuggable
     static C library.  This causes the normal static and shared (if
     enabled) C libraries to be compiled with maximal optimization,
     including the `-fomit-frame-pointer' switch that makes debugging
     impossible on many machines, and without debugging information
     (which makes the binaries substantially smaller).  An additional
     static library is compiled with no optimization and full debugging
     information, and installed as `-lc_g'.

   The simplest way to run `configure' is to do it in the directory
that contains the library sources.  This prepares to build the library
in that very directory.

   You can prepare to build the library in some other directory by going
to that other directory to run `configure'.  In order to run configure,
you will have to specify a directory for it, like this:

     mkdir sun4
     cd sun4
     ../configure sparc-sun-sunos4.1

`configure' looks for the sources in whatever directory you specified
for finding `configure' itself.  It does not matter where in the file
system the source and build directories are--as long as you specify the
source directory when you run `configure', you will get the proper
results.

   This feature lets you keep sources and binaries in different
directories, and that makes it easy to build the library for several
different machines from the same set of sources.  Simply create a build
directory for each target machine, and run `configure' in that
directory specifying the target machine's configuration name.

   The library has a number of special-purpose configuration parameters.
These are defined in the file `Makeconfig'; see the comments in that
file for the details.

   But don't edit the file `Makeconfig' yourself--instead, create a
file `configparms' in the directory where you are building the library,
and define in tha