Even numbered versions are `stable'. The webpages for the stable version (1.4) reside on the GNU servers. Big enhancements go into the latest odd numbered version (1.5), whose webpages are on the lilypond site.
Building LilyPond is an involved process. We advise to use binary packages if these are available for your platform.
Download source tarballs from here:
Use Xdelta to patch tarballs, e.g. to patch
lilypond-1.4.2.tar.gz to lilypond-1.4.3.tar.gz, do
xdelta patch lilypond-1.4.2-1.4.3.xd lilypond-1.4.2.tar.gz
For information on packaging and CVS, see http://lilypond.org/, under "develoment".
Check out http://lilypond.org for up to date information on binary packages.
If you are upgrading from a previous version of LilyPond, be sure to
remove all old font files. These include .pk and .tfm files
that may be located in /var/lib/texmf, /var/spool/texmf,
/var/tmp/texmf or prefix/share/lilypond/fonts/. A
script automating this has been included, see
buildscripts/clean-fonts.sh.
You need the following packages to compile LilyPond:
WARNING: plain Flex 2.5.4(a) generates invalid C++ code. GCC 3.x chokes on this. If you wish to use GCC 3.x, make sure that your distribution supports g++ 3.x and flex. For workarounds, see lexer-gcc-3.1.sh in the source directory.
TeX is used as an output backend.
Also, TeX's libkpathsea is used to find the fonts (.mf,
.afm, .tfm). Make sure you have tetex 1.0 or newer
(1.0.6 is known to work). You may need to install a tetex-devel (or
tetex-dev or libkpathsea-dev) package too.
This package is normally included with the TeX distribution.
GNU LilyPond does use a lot of resources. For operation you need the following software:
For running LilyPond successfully
You have to help TeX and MetaFont find LilyPond support
files. After compiling, scripts to do this can be found in
buildscripts/out/lilypond-profile and
buildscripts/out/lilypond-login.
You can view the documentation online at http://www.lilypond.org/doc/, but you can also build it locally. This process requires a successful compile of lilypond. The documentation is built by issuing:
make web
Building the website requires some additional tools:
You will need to install some additional packages to get mftrace to work.
To install GNU LilyPond, type
gunzip -c lilypond-x.y.z | tar xf -
cd lilypond-x.y.z
./configure # run with --help to see appropriate options
make
make install
sh buildscripts/clean-fonts.sh
If, in addition, you want to generate PDF files of your scores and have installed mftrace, type
make pfa-fonts
make MAKE_PFA_FILES=1 install
texhash
PFA versions of the fonts for the latest LilyPond version can also be obtained from the internet: download the .deb file that corresponds to your version, eg.
wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/l/lilypond/lilypond_1.8.0-1_i386.deb
ar x lilypond_1.8.0.-1_i386.deb
tar -C / -zxf data.tar.gz /usr/share/lilypond/1.8.0/fonts/type1/
tar -C / -zxf data.tar.gz /usr/share/lilypond/1.8.0/dvips/
texhash
If you are installing LilyPond somewhere else, unpack the appropriate
files as shown, and move them to the appropriate paths. Of course, the
.deb version number should correspond to what you are installing.
If you are doing an upgrade, you should remove all feta
.pk and .tfm files. A script has been provided to do the
work for you, see buildscripts/clean-fonts.sh.
If you are not root, you should choose a --prefix argument that
points into your home directory, e.g.:
./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
In this case, you have to insert the contents of
buildscripts/out/lilypond-login or
buildscripts/out/lilypond-profile into your start up scripts by
hand.
If you want to build multiple versions of LilyPond with different
configuration settings, you can use the --enable-config=CONF
option of configure. You should use make conf=CONF to generate
the output in out-CONF. Example: Suppose I want to build with
and without profiling. Then I'd use the following for the normal
build:
./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr/ --enable-checking
make
make install
and for the profiling version, I specify a different configuration:
./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr/ --enable-profiling --enable-config=prof --disable-checking
make conf=prof
make conf=prof install
An Emacs mode for entering music and running LilyPond is contained in
the source archive as lilypond-mode.el,
lilypond-indent.el, lilypond-font-lock.el and
lilypond.words. You should install these files to a directory
included in your load-path. File lilypond-init.el should
be placed to load-path/site-start.d/ or appended to your
~/.emacs or ~/.emacs.el.
As a user, you may want add your source path or, e.g., ~/site-lisp/
to your load-path. Append the following line (modified) to your
~/.emacs:
(setq load-path (append (list (expand-file-name "~/site-lisp")) load-path))
A Vim mode for entering music and running LilyPond is contained in
the source archive. Append the content of vimrc to ~/.vimrc
to get shortcuts. Install file lilypond.words to ~/.vim/ to
get auto-completion. Syntax highlighting you get by installing
lilypond.vim to ~/.vim/syntax/ and appending the following
to ~/.vim/filetype.vim:
" my filetype file
if exists("did_load_filetypes")
finish
endif
augroup filetypedetect
au! BufRead,BufNewFile *.ly setfiletype lilypond
augroup
For help and questions use lilypond-user@gnu.org. Please consult the FAQ before mailing your problems. If you find bugs, please send bug reports to bug-lilypond@gnu.org.
Bugs that are not fault of LilyPond are documented here.
If kpathsea and the corresponding header files are installed in some
directory where GCC does not search by default, for example in
/usr/local/lib/ and /usr/local/include/ respectively,
you have to explicitly tell configure where to find it. To do this:
rm config.cache
export LDFLAGS=-L/usr/share/texmf/lib
export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/share/texmf/include
./configure
config.make and will be used even if you don't have the
environment variables set during make.
Gcc 3.0.4 is flaky; upgrade GCC.
Flex 2.5.4a does not produce g++-3.1.1 compliant C++ code. To compile LilyPond with gcc-3.1.1 you may do
CONF=gcc-3.1 ./lexer-gcc-3.1.sh
CPPFLAGS=-I$(pwd)/lily/out-gcc-3.1 CC=gcc-3.1 CXX=g++-3.1 \
./configure --enable-config=gcc-3.1
CONF=gcc-3.1 ./lexer-gcc-3.1.sh
make conf=gcc-3.1
/usr/pkg paths. Configure it using:
CFLAGS='-I /usr/pkg/include' LDFLAGS='-L/usr/pkg/lib' ./configure
./configure needs a POSIX compliant shell. On Solaris7,
/bin/sh is not yet POSIX compliant, but /bin/ksh or bash
is. Please run configure like:
CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/ksh ksh -c ./configure
or:
CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/bash bash -c ./configure
Not yet resolved.
The following is from the gcc install/SPECIFIC file:
Some versions of the AIX binder (linker) can fail with a relocation overflow severe error when the -bbigtoc option is used to link GCC-produced object files into an executable that overflows the TOC. A fix for APAR IX75823 (OVERFLOW DURING LINK WHEN USING GCC AND -BBIGTOC) is available from IBM Customer Support and from its 27service.boulder.ibm.com website as PTF U455193.Binutils does not support AIX 4.3 (at least through release 2.9). GNU as and GNU ld will not work properly and one should not configure GCC to use those GNU utilities. Use the native AIX tools which do interoperate with GCC.
add -Wl,-bbigtoc to USER_LDFLAGS, i.e.:
LDFLAGS='-Wl,-bbigtoc' ./configure
This page is for LilyPond-1.8.2 (stable-branch).