$Id: README 33168 2014-03-13 08:37:06Z peter $
Public domain.  Originally written 2005 by Karl Berry.

For a high-level overview of building TeX Live, see
http://tug.org/texlive/build.html.  In brief:

To configure and make the source tree, run ./Build.
To build (mostly) without optimization, run ./Build --debug.
To make without configuring, run TL_CONFIGURE=true ./Build.

(Nearly everything the Build script does can be overridden via
environment variables; just take a look to see all the names.)

Prerequisites:
- C and C++ compilers.

- GNU make.  If your GNU make is invoked by some name other than `make',
  try: env TL_MAKE=/your/gnu/make ./Build

- GNU clisp and GNU libffcall, for xindy.  See more
  details in utils/README.  (Alternative: Build --disable-xindy.)
  Also perl, latex, and pdflatex to build the rules and/or documentation.

- Perl to autodetect the TeX Live platform name for biber.

- X11 headers and libraries (often a ``development'' package, not
  installed by default), for pdfopen and xdvi.
  (Alternative: Build --without-x.)

- libfontconfig (again both headers and library), for XeTeX,
  except on MacOSX.  (Alternative: Build --disable-xetex.)
  While on MacOSX, an Objective C++ compiler is needed for XeTeX.

- If you modify any .y or .l source files, then Bison and Flex (or maybe
  equivalents) are needed.  The distributed .c and .h files are generated
  with bison-3.0 and flex-2.5.37.

The binaries will be left in ./inst/bin/<stdplatform>.
For TeX Live, ignore the other files and directories that end up in ./inst.

The new binaries are not directly usable from that location.  Instead,
copy them to Master/bin/<tlplatformname>/.

That should be it for normal builds.  Email tex-live@tug.org if problems.

To make a usable TeX installation, you have to have (thousands of)
support files as well as the binaries that are built here.  The support
files are maintained completely independently.  The best basis for
dealing with them is the TeX Live (plain text) database,
Master/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb, and/or our installer.  More information is
under Master/tlpkg.  See also http://tug.org/texlive/distro.html.

If your C++ needs to find the standard library in, say, /usr/local/lib,
(i.e., configure fails saying the compiler doesn't work), try:
env LD_OPTIONS=-R/usr/local/lib ./Build

Many more details about the TL build system, such as adding new
programs or libraries, recompiling after fixing problems, etc., are in
doc/texlive.pdf and in the other README.* files here.


Build information for some of the platforms.

i386-linux: gcc 4.8.2, Linux 2.6.18-* (CentOS 5, tug.org)
  ~karl/bin/mybuild
        
x86_64-linux: gcc 4.8.2, libc 2.3.6, Linux 2.6.28.6
  
i386-solaris, x86_64-solaris: Solaris 10.

i386-cygwin: gcc-4.5.3.

powerpc-linux (Debian Squeeze)
  Linux homer 2.6.32-5-powerpc64 #1 SMP Tue Mar 8 02:01:42 UTC 2011
  ppc64 Debian GNU/Linux 6.0
  (only the kernel is 64bit, the entire userland is 32bit)

sparc-solaris: gcc-4.5.0, Solaris 5.10 (Utah).

universal-darwin, x86_64-darwin: a menagerie of versions.
  See Master/source/mactexdoc.tar.xz.