1
2XZ Utils Installation
3=====================
4
5    0. Preface
6    1. Supported platforms
7       1.1. Compilers
8       1.2. Platform-specific notes
9            1.2.1. AIX
10            1.2.2. IRIX
11            1.2.3. MINIX 3
12            1.2.4. OpenVMS
13            1.2.5. Solaris, OpenSolaris, and derivatives
14            1.2.6. Tru64
15            1.2.7. Windows
16            1.2.8. DOS
17       1.3. Adding support for new platforms
18    2. configure options
19       2.1. Static vs. dynamic linking of liblzma
20       2.2. Optimizing xzdec and lzmadec
21    3. xzgrep and other scripts
22       3.1. Dependencies
23       3.2. PATH
24    4. Troubleshooting
25       4.1. "No C99 compiler was found."
26       4.2. "No POSIX conforming shell (sh) was found."
27       4.3. configure works but build fails at crc32_x86.S
28       4.4. Lots of warnings about symbol visibility
29       4.5. "make check" fails
30       4.6. liblzma.so (or similar) not found when running xz
31
32
330. Preface
34----------
35
36    If you aren't familiar with building packages that use GNU Autotools,
37    see the file INSTALL.generic for generic instructions before reading
38    further.
39
40    If you are going to build a package for distribution, see also the
41    file PACKAGERS. It contains information that should help making the
42    binary packages as good as possible, but the information isn't very
43    interesting to those making local builds for private use or for use
44    in special situations like embedded systems.
45
46
471. Supported platforms
48----------------------
49
50    XZ Utils are developed on GNU/Linux, but they should work on many
51    POSIX-like operating systems like *BSDs and Solaris, and even on
52    a few non-POSIX operating systems.
53
54
551.1. Compilers
56
57    A C99 compiler is required to compile XZ Utils. If you use GCC, you
58    need at least version 3.x.x. GCC version 2.xx.x doesn't support some
59    C99 features used in XZ Utils source code, thus GCC 2 won't compile
60    XZ Utils.
61
62    XZ Utils takes advantage of some GNU C extensions when building
63    with GCC. Because these extensions are used only when building
64    with GCC, it should be possible to use any C99 compiler.
65
66
671.2. Platform-specific notes
68
691.2.1. AIX
70
71    If you use IBM XL C compiler, pass CC=xlc_r to configure. If
72    you use CC=xlc instead, you must disable threading support
73    with --disable-threads (usually not recommended).
74
75
761.2.2. IRIX
77
78    MIPSpro 7.4.4m has been reported to produce broken code if using
79    the -O2 optimization flag ("make check" fails). Using -O1 should
80    work.
81
82    A problem has been reported when using shared liblzma. Passing
83    --disable-shared to configure works around this. Alternatively,
84    putting "-64" to CFLAGS to build a 64-bit version might help too.
85
86
871.2.3. MINIX 3
88
89    The default install of MINIX 3 includes Amsterdam Compiler Kit (ACK),
90    which doesn't support C99. Install GCC to compile XZ Utils.
91
92    MINIX 3.1.8 and older have bugs in /usr/include/stdint.h, which has
93    to be patched before XZ Utils can be compiled correctly. See
94    <http://gforge.cs.vu.nl/gf/project/minix/tracker/?action=TrackerItemEdit&tracker_item_id=537>.
95
96    MINIX 3.2.0 and later use a different libc and aren't affected by
97    the above bug.
98
99    XZ Utils doesn't have code to detect the amount of physical RAM and
100    number of CPU cores on MINIX 3.
101
102    See section 4.4 in this file about symbol visibility warnings (you
103    may want to pass gl_cv_cc_visibility=no to configure).
104
105
1061.2.4. OpenVMS
107
108    XZ Utils can be built for OpenVMS, but the build system files
109    are not included in the XZ Utils source package. The required
110    OpenVMS-specific files are maintained by Jouk Jansen and can be
111    downloaded here:
112
113        http://nchrem.tnw.tudelft.nl/openvms/software2.html#xzutils
114
115
1161.2.5. Solaris, OpenSolaris, and derivatives
117
118    The following linker error has been reported on some x86 systems:
119
120        ld: fatal: relocation error: R_386_GOTOFF: ...
121
122    This can be worked around by passing gl_cv_cc_visibility=no
123    as an argument to the configure script.
124
125    test_scripts.sh in "make check" may fail if good enough tools are
126    missing from PATH (/usr/xpg4/bin or /usr/xpg6/bin). See sections
127    4.5 and 3.2 for more information.
128
129
1301.2.6. Tru64
131
132    If you try to use the native C compiler on Tru64 (passing CC=cc to
133    configure), you may need the workaround mention in section 4.1 in
134    this file (pass also ac_cv_prog_cc_c99= to configure).
135
136
1371.2.7. Windows
138
139    Building XZ Utils on Windows is supported under the following
140    environments:
141
142      - MinGW-w64 + MSYS (32-bit and 64-bit x86): This is used
143        for building the official binary packages for Windows.
144        There is windows/build.bash to ease packaging XZ Utils with
145        MinGW(-w64) + MSYS into a redistributable .zip or .7z file.
146        See windows/INSTALL-MinGW.txt for more information.
147
148      - MinGW + MSYS (32-bit x86): I haven't recently tested this.
149
150      - Cygwin 1.7.35 and later: NOTE that using XZ Utils >= 5.2.0
151        under Cygwin older than 1.7.35 can lead to DATA LOSS! If
152        you must use an old Cygwin version, stick to XZ Utils 5.0.x
153        which is safe under older Cygwin versions. You can check
154        the Cygwin version with the command "cygcheck -V".
155
156      - Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 update 2 or later (MSVC for short):
157        See windows/INSTALL-MSVC.txt for more information.
158
159    It may be possible to build liblzma with other toolchains too, but
160    that will probably require writing a separate makefile. Building
161    the command line tools with non-GNU toolchains will be harder than
162    building only liblzma.
163
164    Even if liblzma is built with MinGW(-w64), the resulting DLL can
165    be used by other compilers and linkers, including MSVC. See
166    windows/README-Windows.txt for details.
167
168
1691.2.8. DOS
170
171    There is an experimental Makefile in the "dos" directory to build
172    XZ Utils on DOS using DJGPP. Support for long file names (LFN) is
173    needed. See dos/README for more information.
174
175    GNU Autotools based build hasn't been tried on DOS. If you try, I
176    would like to hear if it worked.
177
178
1791.3. Adding support for new platforms
180
181    If you have written patches to make XZ Utils to work on previously
182    unsupported platform, please send the patches to me! I will consider
183    including them to the official version. It's nice to minimize the
184    need of third-party patching.
185
186    One exception: Don't request or send patches to change the whole
187    source package to C89. I find C99 substantially nicer to write and
188    maintain. However, the public library headers must be in C89 to
189    avoid frustrating those who maintain programs, which are strictly
190    in C89 or C++.
191
192
1932. configure options
194--------------------
195
196    In most cases, the defaults are what you want. Many of the options
197    below are useful only when building a size-optimized version of
198    liblzma or command line tools.
199
200    --enable-encoders=LIST
201    --disable-encoders
202                Specify a comma-separated LIST of filter encoders to
203                build. See "./configure --help" for exact list of
204                available filter encoders. The default is to build all
205                supported encoders.
206
207                If LIST is empty or --disable-encoders is used, no filter
208                encoders will be built and also the code shared between
209                encoders will be omitted.
210
211                Disabling encoders will remove some symbols from the
212                liblzma ABI, so this option should be used only when it
213                is known to not cause problems.
214
215    --enable-decoders=LIST
216    --disable-decoders
217                This is like --enable-encoders but for decoders. The
218                default is to build all supported decoders.
219
220    --enable-match-finders=LIST
221                liblzma includes two categories of match finders:
222                hash chains and binary trees. Hash chains (hc3 and hc4)
223                are quite fast but they don't provide the best compression
224                ratio. Binary trees (bt2, bt3 and bt4) give excellent
225                compression ratio, but they are slower and need more
226                memory than hash chains.
227
228                You need to enable at least one match finder to build the
229                LZMA1 or LZMA2 filter encoders. Usually hash chains are
230                used only in the fast mode, while binary trees are used to
231                when the best compression ratio is wanted.
232
233                The default is to build all the match finders if LZMA1
234                or LZMA2 filter encoders are being built.
235
236    --enable-checks=LIST
237                liblzma support multiple integrity checks. CRC32 is
238                mandatory, and cannot be omitted. See "./configure --help"
239                for exact list of available integrity check types.
240
241                liblzma and the command line tools can decompress files
242                which use unsupported integrity check type, but naturally
243                the file integrity cannot be verified in that case.
244
245                Disabling integrity checks may remove some symbols from
246                the liblzma ABI, so this option should be used only when
247                it is known to not cause problems.
248
249    --enable-external-sha256
250                Try to use SHA-256 code from the operating system libc
251                or similar base system libraries. This doesn't try to
252                use OpenSSL or libgcrypt or such libraries.
253
254                The reasons to use this option:
255
256                  - It makes liblzma slightly smaller.
257
258                  - It might improve SHA-256 speed if the implementation
259                    in the operating is very good (but see below).
260
261                External SHA-256 is disabled by default for two reasons:
262
263                  - On some operating systems the symbol names of the
264                    SHA-256 functions conflict with OpenSSL's libcrypto.
265                    This causes weird problems such as decompression
266                    errors if an application is linked against both
267                    liblzma and libcrypto. This problem affects at least
268                    FreeBSD 10 and older and MINIX 3.3.0 and older, but
269                    other OSes that provide a function "SHA256_Init" might
270                    also be affected. FreeBSD 11 has the problem fixed.
271                    NetBSD had the problem but it was fixed it in 2009
272                    already. OpenBSD uses "SHA256Init" and thus never had
273                    a conflict with libcrypto.
274
275                  - The SHA-256 code in liblzma is faster than the SHA-256
276                    code provided by some operating systems. If you are
277                    curious, build two copies of xz (internal and external
278                    SHA-256) and compare the decompression (xz --test)
279                    times:
280
281                        dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024k count=1024 \
282                            | xz -v -0 -Csha256 > foo.xz
283                        time xz --test foo.xz
284
285    --disable-xz
286    --disable-xzdec
287    --disable-lzmadec
288    --disable-lzmainfo
289                Don't build and install the command line tool mentioned
290                in the option name.
291
292                NOTE: Disabling xz will skip some tests in "make check".
293
294                NOTE: If xzdec is disabled and lzmadec is left enabled,
295                a dangling man page symlink lzmadec.1 -> xzdec.1 is
296                created.
297
298    --disable-lzma-links
299                Don't create symlinks for LZMA Utils compatibility.
300                This includes lzma, unlzma, and lzcat. If scripts are
301                installed, also lzdiff, lzcmp, lzgrep, lzegrep, lzfgrep,
302                lzmore, and lzless will be omitted if this option is used.
303
304    --disable-scripts
305                Don't install the scripts xzdiff, xzgrep, xzmore, xzless,
306                and their symlinks.
307
308    --disable-doc
309                Don't install the documentation files to $docdir
310                (often /usr/doc/xz or /usr/local/doc/xz). Man pages
311                will still be installed. The $docdir can be changed
312                with --docdir=DIR.
313
314    --disable-assembler
315                liblzma includes some assembler optimizations. Currently
316                there is only assembler code for CRC32 and CRC64 for
317                32-bit x86.
318
319                All the assembler code in liblzma is position-independent
320                code, which is suitable for use in shared libraries and
321                position-independent executables. So far only i386
322                instructions are used, but the code is optimized for i686
323                class CPUs. If you are compiling liblzma exclusively for
324                pre-i686 systems, you may want to disable the assembler
325                code.
326
327    --enable-unaligned-access
328                Allow liblzma to use unaligned memory access for 16-bit
329                and 32-bit loads and stores. This should be enabled only
330                when the hardware supports this, i.e. when unaligned
331                access is fast. Some operating system kernels emulate
332                unaligned access, which is extremely slow. This option
333                shouldn't be used on systems that rely on such emulation.
334
335                Unaligned access is enabled by default on x86, x86-64,
336                and big endian PowerPC.
337
338    --enable-small
339                Reduce the size of liblzma by selecting smaller but
340                semantically equivalent version of some functions, and
341                omit precomputed lookup tables. This option tends to
342                make liblzma slightly slower.
343
344                Note that while omitting the precomputed tables makes
345                liblzma smaller on disk, the tables are still needed at
346                run time, and need to be computed at startup. This also
347                means that the RAM holding the tables won't be shared
348                between applications linked against shared liblzma.
349
350                This option doesn't modify CFLAGS to tell the compiler
351                to optimize for size. You need to add -Os or equivalent
352                flag(s) to CFLAGS manually.
353
354    --enable-assume-ram=SIZE
355                On the most common operating systems, XZ Utils is able to
356                detect the amount of physical memory on the system. This
357                information is used by the options --memlimit-compress,
358                --memlimit-decompress, and --memlimit when setting the
359                limit to a percentage of total RAM.
360
361                On some systems, there is no code to detect the amount of
362                RAM though. Using --enable-assume-ram one can set how much
363                memory to assume on these systems. SIZE is given as MiB.
364                The default is 128 MiB.
365
366                Feel free to send patches to add support for detecting
367                the amount of RAM on the operating system you use. See
368                src/common/tuklib_physmem.c for details.
369
370    --enable-threads=METHOD
371                Threading support is enabled by default so normally there
372                is no need to specify this option.
373
374                Supported values for METHOD:
375
376                        yes     Autodetect the threading method. If none
377                                is found, configure will give an error.
378
379                        posix   Use POSIX pthreads. This is the default
380                                except on Windows outside Cygwin.
381
382                        win95   Use Windows 95 compatible threads. This
383                                is compatible with Windows XP and later
384                                too. This is the default for 32-bit x86
385                                Windows builds. The `win95' threading is
386                                incompatible with --enable-small.
387
388                        vista   Use Windows Vista compatible threads. The
389                                resulting binaries won't run on Windows XP
390                                or older. This is the default for Windows
391                                excluding 32-bit x86 builds (that is, on
392                                x86-64 the default is `vista').
393
394                        no      Disable threading support. This is the
395                                same as using --disable-threads.
396                                NOTE: If combined with --enable-small, the
397                                resulting liblzma won't be thread safe,
398                                that is, if a multi-threaded application
399                                calls any liblzma functions from more than
400                                one thread, something bad may happen.
401
402    --enable-sandbox=METHOD
403                This feature is EXPERIMENTAL in the XZ Utils 5.2.x and
404                disabled by default. If you test this, look especially
405                if message translations and locale-specific decimal and
406                thousand separators (e.g. xz --list foo.xz) work the
407                same way as they do without sandboxing.
408
409                There is limited sandboxing support in the xz tool. If
410                built with sandbox support, it's used automatically when
411                (de)compressing exactly one file to standard output and
412                the options --files or --files0 weren't used. This is a
413                common use case, for example, (de)compressing .tar.xz
414                files via GNU tar. The sandbox is also used for
415                single-file `xz --test' or `xz --list'.
416
417                Supported METHODs:
418
419                        auto    Look for a supported sandboxing method
420                                and use it if found. If no method is
421                                found, then sandboxing isn't used.
422
423                        no      Disable sandboxing support.
424
425                        capsicum
426                                Use Capsicum (FreeBSD >= 10) for
427                                sandboxing. If no Capsicum support
428                                is found, configure will give an error.
429
430    --enable-symbol-versions
431                Use symbol versioning for liblzma. This is enabled by
432                default on GNU/Linux, other GNU-based systems, and
433                FreeBSD.
434
435    --enable-debug
436                This enables the assert() macro and possibly some other
437                run-time consistency checks. It makes the code slower, so
438                you normally don't want to have this enabled.
439
440    --enable-werror
441                If building with GCC, make all compiler warnings an error,
442                that abort the compilation. This may help catching bugs,
443                and should work on most systems. This has no effect on the
444                resulting binaries.
445
446
4472.1. Static vs. dynamic linking of liblzma
448
449    On 32-bit x86, linking against static liblzma can give a minor
450    speed improvement. Static libraries on x86 are usually compiled as
451    position-dependent code (non-PIC) and shared libraries are built as
452    position-independent code (PIC). PIC wastes one register, which can
453    make the code slightly slower compared to a non-PIC version. (Note
454    that this doesn't apply to x86-64.)
455
456    If you want to link xz against static liblzma, the simplest way
457    is to pass --disable-shared to configure. If you want also shared
458    liblzma, run configure again and run "make install" only for
459    src/liblzma.
460
461
4622.2. Optimizing xzdec and lzmadec
463
464    xzdec and lzmadec are intended to be relatively small instead of
465    optimizing for the best speed. Thus, it is a good idea to build
466    xzdec and lzmadec separately:
467
468      - To link the tools against static liblzma, pass --disable-shared
469        to configure.
470
471      - To select somewhat size-optimized variant of some things in
472        liblzma, pass --enable-small to configure.
473
474      - Tell the compiler to optimize for size instead of speed.
475        E.g. with GCC, put -Os into CFLAGS.
476
477      - xzdec and lzmadec will never use multithreading capabilities of
478        liblzma. You can avoid dependency on libpthread by passing
479        --disable-threads to configure.
480
481      - There are and will be no translated messages for xzdec and
482        lzmadec, so it is fine to pass also --disable-nls to configure.
483
484      - Only decoder code is needed, so you can speed up the build
485        slightly by passing --disable-encoders to configure. This
486        shouldn't affect the final size of the executables though,
487        because the linker is able to omit the encoder code anyway.
488
489    If you have no use for xzdec or lzmadec, you can disable them with
490    --disable-xzdec and --disable-lzmadec.
491
492
4933. xzgrep and other scripts
494---------------------------
495
4963.1. Dependencies
497
498    POSIX shell (sh) and bunch of other standard POSIX tools are required
499    to run the scripts. The configure script tries to find a POSIX
500    compliant sh, but if it fails, you can force the shell by passing
501    gl_cv_posix_shell=/path/to/posix-sh as an argument to the configure
502    script.
503
504    xzdiff (xzcmp/lzdiff/lzcmp) may use mktemp if it is available. As
505    a fallback xzdiff will use mkdir to securely create a temporary
506    directory. Having mktemp available is still recommended since the
507    mkdir fallback method isn't as robust as mktemp is. The original
508    mktemp can be found from <http://www.mktemp.org/>. On GNU, most will
509    use the mktemp program from GNU coreutils instead of the original
510    implementation. Both mktemp versions are fine.
511
512    In addition to using xz to decompress .xz files, xzgrep and xzdiff
513    use gzip, bzip2, and lzop to support .gz, bz2, and .lzo files.
514
515
5163.2. PATH
517
518    The scripts assume that the required tools (standard POSIX utilities,
519    mktemp, and xz) are in PATH; the scripts don't set the PATH themselves.
520    Some people like this while some think this is a bug. Those in the
521    latter group can easily patch the scripts before running the configure
522    script by taking advantage of a placeholder line in the scripts.
523
524    For example, to make the scripts prefix /usr/bin:/bin to PATH:
525
526        perl -pi -e 's|^#SET_PATH.*$|PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:\$PATH|' \
527                src/scripts/xz*.in
528
529
5304. Troubleshooting
531------------------
532
5334.1. "No C99 compiler was found."
534
535    You need a C99 compiler to build XZ Utils. If the configure script
536    cannot find a C99 compiler and you think you have such a compiler
537    installed, set the compiler command by passing CC=/path/to/c99 as
538    an argument to the configure script.
539
540    If you get this error even when you think your compiler supports C99,
541    you can override the test by passing ac_cv_prog_cc_c99= as an argument
542    to the configure script. The test for C99 compiler is not perfect (and
543    it is not as easy to make it perfect as it sounds), so sometimes this
544    may be needed. You will get a compile error if your compiler doesn't
545    support enough C99.
546
547
5484.2. "No POSIX conforming shell (sh) was found."
549
550    xzgrep and other scripts need a shell that (roughly) conforms
551    to POSIX. The configure script tries to find such a shell. If
552    it fails, you can force the shell to be used by passing
553    gl_cv_posix_shell=/path/to/posix-sh as an argument to the configure
554    script. Alternatively you can omit the installation of scripts and
555    this error by passing --disable-scripts to configure.
556
557
5584.3. configure works but build fails at crc32_x86.S
559
560    The easy fix is to pass --disable-assembler to the configure script.
561
562    The configure script determines if assembler code can be used by
563    looking at the configure triplet; there is currently no check if
564    the assembler code can actually actually be built. The x86 assembler
565    code should work on x86 GNU/Linux, *BSDs, Solaris, Darwin, MinGW,
566    Cygwin, and DJGPP. On other x86 systems, there may be problems and
567    the assembler code may need to be disabled with the configure option.
568
569    If you get this error when building for x86-64, you have specified or
570    the configure script has misguessed your architecture. Pass the
571    correct configure triplet using the --build=CPU-COMPANY-SYSTEM option
572    (see INSTALL.generic).
573
574
5754.4. Lots of warnings about symbol visibility
576
577    On some systems where symbol visibility isn't supported, GCC may
578    still accept the visibility options and attributes, which will make
579    configure think that visibility is supported. This will result in
580    many compiler warnings. You can avoid the warnings by forcing the
581    visibility support off by passing gl_cv_cc_visibility=no as an
582    argument to the configure script. This has no effect on the
583    resulting binaries, but fewer warnings looks nicer and may allow
584    using --enable-werror.
585
586
5874.5. "make check" fails
588
589    If the other tests pass but test_scripts.sh fails, then the problem
590    is in the scripts in src/scripts. Comparing the contents of
591    tests/xzgrep_test_output to tests/xzgrep_expected_output might
592    give a good idea about problems in xzgrep. One possibility is that
593    some tools are missing from the current PATH or the tools lack
594    support for some POSIX features. This can happen at least on
595    Solaris where the tools in /bin may be ancient but good enough
596    tools are available in /usr/xpg4/bin or /usr/xpg6/bin. One fix
597    for this problem is described in section 3.2 of this file.
598
599    If tests other than test_scripts.sh fail, a likely reason is that
600    libtool links the test programs against an installed version of
601    liblzma instead of the version that was just built. This is
602    obviously a bug which seems to happen on some platforms.
603    A workaround is to uninstall the old liblzma versions first.
604
605    If the problem isn't any of those described above, then it's likely
606    a bug in XZ Utils or in the compiler. See the platform-specific
607    notes in this file for possible known problems. Please report
608    a bug if you cannot solve the problem. See README for contact
609    information.
610
611
6124.6. liblzma.so (or similar) not found when running xz
613
614    If you installed the package with "make install" and get an error
615    about liblzma.so (or a similarly named file) being missing, try
616    running "ldconfig" to update the run-time linker cache (if your
617    operating system has such a command).
618
619