8 Compiling programs that use X

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Please read the GCC-FAQ, that can be found in the docs directories of sunsite and tsx-11 before compiling any programs. Many questions (in fact, most) on compiling programs with Linux are answered there. Many Linux distributions include most relevant FAQs in the directory /usr/doc, so you might look there first.

If you have the source code for a program that uses X11, usually it will be shipped with an Imakefile instead of a Makefile. What to do now?

Run xmkmf in the directory that containes the Imakefile. If there is a hierarchy of directories with Imakefiles, you usually only have to run xmkmf in the root directory of that hierachy. You can configure the rest by typing make Makefiles. This will build the Makefiles in all directories in the hierachy. Then you should run make depend. Don't be afraid if include files like stddef.h, varargs.h, ... are not found, they are gcc proprietary header files and therefore not in the standard include directories (XFree86 versions prior to 2.1 use a makedepend not based on gcc -M). After that you can make the program by running make and you can install it (usually in /usr/X386/bin) by running make install, installing of the manpages is done by running make install.man. Of course, before even running xmkmf, you should have read the documentation that comes usually with such packages.

If libraries are missing, please read section Additional libraries above.

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