Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.

Installation

(A copy of this chapter is in the distribution file `web2c/INSTALL'.)

Installing Web2c is mostly the same as installing any other Kpathsea-using program. Therefore, for the basic steps involved, see section `Installation' in Kpathsea. (A copy is in the file `kpathsea/INSTALL'.)

One peculiarity to Web2c is that the source distribution comes in two files: `web.tar.gz' and `web2c.tar.gz'. You must retrieve and unpack them both. (We have two because the former archive contains the very large and seldom-changing original WEB source files.) See section `unixtex.ftp' in Kpathsea.

Another peculiarity is the MetaPost program. Although it has been installed previously as mp, as of Web2c 7.0 the installed name is now mpost, to avoid conflict with the mp program that does prettyprinting. This approach was recommended by the MetaPost author, John Hobby. If you as the TeX administrator wish to make it available under its shorter name as well, you will have to set up a link or some such yourself. And of course individual users can do the same.

For solutions to common installation problems and information on how to report a bug, see the file `kpathsea/BUGS' (see section `Bugs' in Kpathsea). See also the Web2c home page, http://www.tug.org/web2c.

Points worth repeating:

configure options

This section gives pointers to descriptions of the `--with' and `--enable' configure arguments that Web2c accepts. Some are specific to Web2c, others are generic to all Kpathsea-using programs.

For a list of all the options configure accepts, run `configure --help'. The generic options are listed first, and the package-specific options come last.

For a description of the generic options (which mainly allow you to specify installation directories) and basic configure usage, see section `Running configure scripts' in Autoconf, a copy is in the file `kpathsea/CONFIGURE'.

`--disable-dump-share'
Do not make fmt/base/mem files sharable across different endian architectures. See section Hardware and memory dumps.
`--without-maketexmf-default'
`--without-maketexpk-default'
`--without-maketextfm-default'
`--with-maketextex-default'
Enable or disable the dynamic generation programs. See section `mktex configuration' in Kpathsea. The defaults are the inverse of the options, i.e., everything is enabled except mktextex.
`--enable-auto-core'
Dump `core' if the input file is `HackyInputFileNameForCoreDump.tex'. See section Preloaded executables.
`--enable-shared'
Build Kpathsea as a shared library. See section `Shared library' in Kpathsea.
`--with-editor=cmd'
Change the default editor invoked by the `e' interactive command. See section Editor invocation.
`--with-epsfwin'
`--with-hp2627win'
`--with-mftalkwin'
`--with-nextwin'
`--with-regiswin'
`--with-suntoolswin'
`--with-tektronixwin'
`--with-unitermwin'
`--with-x'
`--with-x-toolkit=KIT'
`--with-x11win'
`--with-x11'
Define Metafont graphics support; by default, no graphics support is enabled. See section Online Metafont graphics.
`--x-includes=dir'
`--x-libraries=dir'
Define the locations of the X11 include files and libraries; by default, configure does its best to guess). See section `Optional Features' in Autoconf. A copy is in `kpathsea/CONFIGURE'.

Compile-time options

In addition to the configure options listed in the previous section, there are a few things that can be affected at compile-time with C definitions, rather than with configure. Using any of these is unusual.

To specify extra compiler flags (`-Dname' in this case), the simplest thing to do is: 

make XCFLAGS="ccoptions"

You can also set the CFLAGS environment variable before running configure. See section `configure environment' in Kpathsea.

Anyway, here are the possibilities:

`-DFIXPT'
`-DNO_MF_ASM'
Use the original WEB fixed-point routines for Metafont and MetaPost arithmetic calculations regarding fractions. By default, assembly-language routines are used on x86 hardware with GNU C (unless `NO_MF_ASM' is defined), and floating-point routines are used otherwise.
`-DIPC_DEBUG'
Report on various interprocess communication activities. See section IPC and TeX.

Additional targets

Web2c has several Make targets besides the standard ones. You can invoke these either in the top level directory of the source distribution (the one containing `kpathsea/' and `web2c/'), or in the `web2c/' directory.

`c-sources'
Make only the C files, translated from the Web sources, presumably because you want to take them to a non-Unix machine.
`formats'
`install-formats'
Make or install all the memory dumps (see section Memory dumps). By default, the standard plain formats plus `latex.fmt' are made. You can add other formats by redefining the fmts, bases, and mems variables. See the top of `web2c/Makefile' for the possibilities.
`fmts'
`install-fmts'
Make or install the TeX `.fmt' files. See section initex invocation.
`bases'
`install-bases'
Make or install the Metafont `.base' files. See section inimf invocation.
`mems'
`install-mems'
Make or install the MetaPost `.mem' files. See section inimpost invocation.
`triptrap'
`trip'
`trap'
`mptrap'
To run the torture tests for TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost (respectively). See the next section.

Trip, trap, and mptrap: Torture tests

To validate your TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost executables, run `make triptrap'. This runs the trip, trap, and mptrap "torture tests". See the files `triptrap/tripman.tex', `triptrap/trapman.tex', and `triptrap/mptrap.readme' for detailed information and background on the tests.

The differences between your executables' behavior and the standard values will show up on your terminal. The usual differences (these are all acceptable) are:

Any other differences are trouble. The most common culprit in the past has been compiler bugs, especially when optimizing. See section `TeX or Metafont failing' in Kpathsea.

The files `trip.diffs', `mftrap.diffs', and `mptrap.diffs' in the `triptrap' directory show the standard diffs against the original output. If you diff your diffs against these files, you should come up clean. For example 

make trip >&mytrip.diffs
diff triptrap/trip.diffs mytrip.diffs

To run the tests separately, use the targets trip, trap, and mptrap.

To run simple tests for all the programs as well as the torture tests, run `make check'. You can compare the output to the distributed file `tests/check.log' if you like.

Runtime options

Besides the configure- and compile-time options described in the previous sections, you can control a number of parameters (in particular, array sizes) in the `texmf.cnf' runtime file read by Kpathsea (see section `Config files' in Kpathsea).

Rather than exhaustively listing them here, please see the last section of the distributed `kpathsea/texmf.cnf'. Some of the more interesting values:

`main_memory'
Total words of memory available, for TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost. Must remake the format file after changing.
`extra_mem_bot'
Extra space for "large" TeX data structures: boxes, glue, breakpoints, et al. If you use PiCTeX, you may well want to set this.
`font_mem_size'
Words of font info available for TeX; this is approximately the total size of all TFM files read.
`hash_extra'
Additional space for the hash table of control sequence names. Approximately 10,000 control sequences can be stored in the main hash table; if you have a large book with numerous cross-references, this might not be enough, and thus you will want to set hash_extra.

Of course, ideally all arrays would be dynamically expanded as necessary, so the only limiting factor would be the amount of swap space available. Unfortunately, implementing this is extremely difficult, as the fixed size of arrays is assumed in many places throughout the source code. These runtime limits are a practical compromise between the compile-time limits in previous versions, and truly dynamic arrays. (On the other hand, the Web2c BibTeX implementation does do dynamic reallocation of some arrays.)

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.