     ______   ___    ___
    /\  _  \ /\_ \  /\_ \
    \ \ \L\ \\//\ \ \//\ \      __     __   _ __   ___ 
     \ \  __ \ \ \ \  \ \ \   /'__`\ /'_ `\/\`'__\/ __`\
      \ \ \/\ \ \_\ \_ \_\ \_/\  __//\ \L\ \ \ \//\ \L\ \
       \ \_\ \_\/\____\/\____\ \____\ \____ \ \_\\ \____/
        \/_/\/_/\/____/\/____/\/____/\/___L\ \/_/ \/___/
                                       /\____/
                                       \_/__/


                 Unix-specific information.

         See readme.txt for a more general overview.

   Also see docs/build/linux.txt for Linux-specific information.

Unix notes

On Linux you have two different system drivers -- one for running using X, and one for running without X. This file describes the X version, which should in theory be totally portable to any Unix variant. For information about the Linux-specific console routines, see docs/build/linux.txt.

Required software

Since you are using a Real Operating System, the chances are that you already have all the necessary development tools, at least for compiling and installing the library. However, you may also need GNU autoconf if you make any changes that require you to regenerate the configure script.

Installing Allegro

If you downloaded Allegro as a Unix format .tar archive, it will already be set up ready to go. If you downloaded a DOS or Windows format .zip version, though, you will need to convert it into Unix format before you can begin, by running:

      chmod +x fix.sh
      ./fix.sh unix

From here on everything is a pretty standard Unix-style install process. First you configure it:

      ./configure

It should automatically build dependencies. Then you build it:

      make

And finally you install it (as root -- see below for information on what to do if you can't be root):

      su -c "make install"

You may also wish to install the man pages:

      su -c "make install-man"

And perhaps the info docs as well:

      su -c "make install-info"

The configure script has many options for changing the install paths, deciding which parts of the library to include or leave out, and specifying whether to build release libs, debug libs, etc. Run ./configure --help for a list of switches. Especially useful options are:

      --enable-static      - builds a statically linked library
      --disable-shared     - disables the default shared libraries
      --enable-dbglib      - builds a debug version of the library
      --enable-dbgprog     - links test programs with the debug library

These switches work in combination, for example if you pass --enable-static but not --disable-shared, you will get both shared and statically linked versions of Allegro.

By default, Allegro will probably install into the /usr/local filesystem. If this hasn't already been set up on your machine, you may have trouble with programs being unable to find the Allegro shared library. On some Unices (for example Linux), you can fix this by adding "/usr/local/lib" to your /etc/ld.so.conf file and then running `ldconfig' as root. On others (for example Solaris), you can hardcode the location of the library into the executables by passing "-R/usr/local/lib" to the compiler or linker. Alternatively, you can add the path to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

If you are compiling a SVN version of Allegro, you need to generate the configure header and script prior to doing anything else. Make sure that GNU autoconf 2.53 or newer is installed on your system and type:

      autoconf

It is possible to add compilation and link flags to the make command line. This is done by passing CFLAGS and/or LDFLAGS to make, with the flags you want. This is meant as a generic customization ability and you should really use configure to set the flags if possible. Note that any flags you pass using the make command line are transient: they will only apply to whatever compilation and link happen to be spawned by this particular invokation of make. When you pass CFLAGS and/or LDFLAGS to the make command line Allegro's build system will use these as a starting point and will add its own flags to those. This means that you should be aware that flags you pass this way may be overridden. For this reason, it is best to only use this to specify flags that do not interfere with the code generation. Useful flags to pass are -save-temps, or -pipe.

Shared files

Installing Allegro will copy the library and header files plus other support files. These are:

allegro-config: Script that outputs the correct compiler and linker flags for your system in order to compile Allegro. This is copied into a `.../bin' path.
allegro.m4: Autoconf support file to include in your `./configure' scripts. Copied into a `.../share/aclocal' path.

On the other hand, there are files which you, as system administrator, are required to installed manually. These are:

language.dat: Contains translations for text strings used by Allegro. If this file is not available, Allegro runtime messages will only speak English. Recommended location is `/usr[/local]/share/allegro'.
allegro.info: Allegro documentation in Info format, viewable with GNU's info viewer. This is copied into the correct `.../info' path of your system if you run `make install-info'.
allegro.cfg: Contains configuration settings for your system when the hardware autodetection fails. You can either copy this file and edit the contents manually or you can use Allegro's setup configuration program (in the `setup' directory) to create this file. Recommended location is `[/usr/local]/etc/allegro.cfg'.

You can find more information about some of these files and other suggestions in the chapter "Unix specifics" of the main Allegro manual.

Using Allegro

The options for linking with Allegro are quite complicated, since for static versions of the library, depending on how it was configured, it may need to pull in other libraries (X, SVGAlib), as well as just Allegro itself, and for all versions the library is split into two chunks -- one of which is always static, and the other of which is sometimes shared. To avoid you having to work out the right linker commands for yourself, the installation creates a script, allegro-config, that will print out a suitable commandline. You can use this inside a backtick command substitution, for example:

      gcc myfile.c -o myprogram `allegro-config --libs`

Or if you want to build a debug version of your program, assuming that you have installed the debug version of Allegro:

      gcc myfile.c -o myprogram `allegro-config --libs debug`

Unix newbies, take note that these are ` backticks, not normal ' quotes!

There are also switches for printing out the Allegro version number, overriding the install paths, and selecting between shared and static libraries, in case you installed both. Run allegro-config without any arguments for a full list of options.

Don't forget that you need to use the END_OF_MAIN() macro right after your main() function!

Setting an X11 icon

You can set the X11 icon for your application to use. To do this, you need to include the icon in .xpm format and then point the symbol allegro_icon to the .xpm data before calling set_gfx_mode(). Alternatively, you can use the xfixicon.sh shellscript to produce a C file that will do this for you automatically when you link it with your project. No other steps are required. The xfixicon.sh utility will also accept bitmaps that are not in .xpm format, interpreting magic pink as transparent. You will need to have the ImageMagik tools installed for this to work.

Shared library compatibility

Allegro can interface with a lot of other libraries -- in particular, various X libraries and SVGAlib. If you link statically to Allegro, your program will depend upon all these other libraries so you may want to link statically to them too. If you link dynamically to Allegro, your binary will only depend upon the Allegro version (and things like libc); in this case your binary is more easily portable, but it does depend upon the way Allegro was configured.

The easiest way to make your program portable is to distribute it in source form. That way the users can configure Allegro for themselves, and will always end up using exactly the right set of libraries for their particular system.

Having said that, if you enable dynamic module support (default), then you should have few (if any) problems.

Security note: Make sure that untrusted users cannot write to either of the `/usr/local/lib/allegro/' or `/usr/lib/allegro/' directories. Allegro looks for dynamically loaded modules in those directories, and loads all of them listed in `modules.lst' at startup.

See also the ABI compatibility document for more information (abi.txt).

What if you're not root?

Allegro can be installed on a system where you don't have root privileges. Using the standard configure script option `--prefix' you can change the target directories for installation -- for example, you can write:

      ./configure --prefix=$HOME

Be a bit careful, --prefix=~ works in bash but not tcsh -- it's safer to use $HOME if you're not sure.

Then binaries will be installed to the `bin' subdirectory of your home directory, libraries to `lib', etc. Now you need to set up your system so that it knows where to find a few things, if this has not been done already. You might want to add these commands to your .bash_profile or similar startup script. If you use a csh-style shell, you want to use `setenv', not `export'.

Your PATH must include the `bin' directory:

      export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

If you are using Allegro as a shared library, you need to tell the dynamic loader where to find the Allegro libraries:

      export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$HOME/lib

GCC needs to know where to find header and library files:

      export C_INCLUDE_PATH=$C_INCLUDE_PATH:$HOME/include
      export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH=$CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH:$HOME/include
      export LIBRARY_PATH=$LIBRARY_PATH:$HOME/lib

Note: in fact `allegro-config' can handle the last step for you, if you use it for compilation as well as linking:

      gcc -c mygame.c `allegro-config --cflags`
      gcc -o mygame mygame.o `allegro-config --libs`

But, it's better to set the environment variables too. Most people don't tend to bother with `allegro-config' when compiling.

Alternatively, you can get the required environment changes from allegro-config, by typing at a shell prompt:

      allegro-config --env

You can catenate the output to your .bash_profile, which is pretty much like adding all of the above commands. Note that `allegro-config' itself is in the `bin' directory of the installation, so either make sure that directory is in your path before running `allegro-config' or specify the path exactly, for example:

      ~/bin/allegro-config --env >> ~/.bash_profile

Notes on drivers

System:: On initialisation, Allegro will try to connect to an X server. If it can't find one, it will give up and try to use some different system driver instead (such as the Linux console). This means that to run it in X mode, you must either launch your programs from inside an X session, or have set the DISPLAY environment variable to indicate what server you would like to use.
Graphics:: There are two different X graphics drivers: GFX_XWINDOWS uses only standard X calls, while GFX_XDGA2 uses the XFree86 DGA 2.0 extension (shipped with XFree86 4.0.x) which allows it to write directly to the screen surface, and use hardware acceleration if available. It is normally much faster than the standard X mode, but requires root permissions and will not work remotely.
If your program requests a different color depth to the current X display, Allegro will emulate the depth you asked for, so that your program will still work, albeit more slowly than if the color depths were identical. To find out whether this emulation is taking place, look at the gfx_driver->desc field (which is displayed in the middle of the screen by the tests/test program). If this says "matching", the color formats are identical, so no conversions are required. If it says "fast", some simple conversions are taking place, but nothing too painful. If it says "slow", you are in trouble :-) This is not valid for the DGA 2.0 driver, as it'll always change the video mode to the specified resolution and color depth.

Irix Notes

If the Irix compiler spits strange lines such as the following when compiling your Allegro program:

      include/allegro/alcompat.h:59: conflicting types for `ceilf'
      /usr/include/math.h:311: previous declaration of `ceilf'
      include/allegro/alcompat.h:60: conflicting types for `floorf'
      /usr/include/math.h:333: previous declaration of `floorf'
      include/allegro/alcompat.h:63: conflicting types for `tanf'
      /usr/include/math.h:176: previous declaration of `tanf'
      include/allegro/alcompat.h:64: conflicting types for `acosf'
      /usr/include/math.h:106: previous declaration of `acosf'
      include/allegro/alcompat.h:65: conflicting types for `asinf'
      /usr/include/math.h:116: previous declaration of `asinf'

then you should #define ALLEGRO_NO_FIX_ALIASES prior to the #include <allegro.h> line.