1.1 Supported Platforms

• Intel GNU/Linux Systems in general, ix86 and x86_64 but other architectures should work

• BSD systems

• Solaris, at least on release 10 and 11

Patches to make it work on other platforms are welcome.

1.2 Software Dependencies

The following software is required to use WINDOW MAKER:

• X11R6.x

  Window Maker can be compiled in older versions of X, like X11R5 (Solaris) or X11R4 (OpenWindows) but it will not work 100% correctly. In such servers there will not be application icons and you'll have trouble using the dock. Upgrading the client libraries (Xlib, Xt, etc.) will help if you can't upgrade the server.

The following is required to build WINDOW MAKER:

• Basic obvious stuff - gcc (or some other ANSI C compiler, supporting some C99 extensions) - glibc development files (usually glibc-devel in Linux distributions) - X development files (XFree86-devel or something similar)

• Xft2 and its dependencies

  Dependencies include freetype2 and fontconfig. You will also need the development files for them (xft2-devel). Sources are available at: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/Xft

Note: WINDOW MAKER is known to compile with gcc and clang; the code source is mostly ANSI C (also known as C89 and C90) but is uses very few of the C99 novelties; it also uses a few attributes introduced in the C11 standard but those are detected automatically, so most compilers should work.

1.3 Special Dependencies

If you want to compile using the sources from the git repository instead of the distribution package, you will also need:

• git

• autoconf 2.69

• automake 1.12

• libtool 1.4.2

1.4 Optional Dependencies

These libraries are not required to make <small>WINDOW MAKER</small> work, but they are supported in case you want to use them. Version numbers are indicative, but other versions might work too.

• libXPM 4.7 or newer

  Older versions may not work!

  Available from http://xlibs.freedesktop.org/release

  There is built-in support for <em>XPM</em> files, but it will not load images in some uncommon encodings.

• libpng 0.96 or newer and zlib

  For PNG image support, http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html

• libtiff 3.4 or newer

  For TIFF image support, http://www.libtiff.org/

• libjpeg 6.0.1 or newer

  For JPEG image support, http://www.ijg.org/

  Note that if you don't have it, configure will issue a big warning in the end, this is because JPEG images are often used in themes and for background images so you probably want this format supported.

• libgif 2.2 or libungif

  For GIF image support, http://giflib.sourceforge.net/

• WebP 0.4.1 or newer

  The reference library from Google for their image format, https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/download

• GNU xgettext

  If you want to use translated messages, you will need GNU gettext. Other versions of gettext are not compatible and will not work. Get the GNU version from http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/

• Pango 1.36.8 or newer

  This library can be used by the WINGs toolkit to improve support for UTF-8 and for languages written in right-to-left direction, in some widgets. You have to explicitly ask for its support through (see Configure Options). You can get it from http://www.pango.org/Download

• libbsd

  This library can be used by the WINGs utility library to make use of strlcat and strlcpy instead of using built-in functions if your system does not provide them in its core libc. You should let WINDOW MAKER's configure detect this for you. You can get it from http://libbsd.freedesktop.org/wiki/

• Inotify

  If you have Linux's inotify support, WINDOW MAKER will use it to check for configuration updates instead of polling regularly the file. The needed header comes with the kernel, typical packages names include:

  • kernel-headers for Slackware and Fedora

  • linux-userspace-headers for Mageia

  • linux-libc-dev for Debian and Ubuntu

  • linux-glibc-devel for OpenSuSE

• MagickWand 6.8.9-9 or newer

  If found, then the library WRaster can use the ImageMagick library to let WINDOW MAKER support more image formats, like SVG, BMP, TGA, ... You can get it from http://www.imagemagick.org/

• Boehm GC

  This library can be used by the WINGs utility toolkit to use a Boehm-Demers-Weiser Garbage Collector instead of the traditional malloc/free functions from the libc. You have to explicitly ask for its support though (see Configure Options). You can get it from http://www.hboehm.info/gc/

2.1 Getting the Sources

The latest version of WINDOW MAKER (-crm) can be downloaded from http://www.windowmaker.org/

Alternatively, the development branch, called #next is in the git repository at http://repo.or.cz/w/wmaker-crm.git

If you want to use the git versions, you can get it with:

git clone -b next git://repo.or.cz/wmaker-crm.git

then, assuming you have the dependencies listed in Special Dependencies, you have to type:

./autogen.sh

to generate the configuration script.

Build and Install

For a quick start, type the following in your shell prompt:

./configure
make

then, login as root and type:

make install
ldconfig

or if you want to strip the debugging symbols from the binaries to make them smaller, you can type instead:

make install-strip
ldconfig

This will build and install WINDOW MAKER with default parameters.

If you want to customise some compile-time options, you can do the following:

1. (optional) Look at the Configure Options, for the options available. Also run:

   ./configure --help

   to get a complete list of options that are available.

1. Run configure with the options you want. For example, if you want to use the --enable-modelock option, type:

   ./configure --enable-modelock

1. (optional) Edit src/wconfig.h with your favourite text editor and browse through it for some options you might want to change.

1. Compile. Just type:

   make

1. Login as root (if you can't do that, read the [I don't have the root](#No-Root-Password)) and install WINDOW MAKER in your system:

   su root
   make install

2.2 User specific configuration

These instructions do not need to be followed when upgrading WINDOW MAKER from an older version, unless stated differently in the NEWS file.

Every user on your system that wishes to run WINDOW MAKER must do the following:

1. Install Window Maker configuration files in your home directory. Type:

   wmaker.inst

   wmaker.inst will install WINDOW MAKER configuration files and will setup X to automatically launch WINDOW MAKER at startup.

That's it!

You can type man wmaker to get some general help for configuration and other stuff.

Read the User Guide for a more in-depth explanation of WINDOW MAKER.

You might want to take a look at the FAQ too.

2.3 Locales/Internationalisation

WINDOW MAKER has national language support. The procedure to enable national language support is described in the dedicated Enabling Languages support in README.i18n.

2.4 Configure Options

These options can be passed to the configure script to enable/disable some WINDOW MAKER features. Example:

./configure --enable-modelock --disable-gif

will configure WINDOW MAKER with modelock supported and disable gif support. Normally, you won't need any of them.

To get the list of all options, run ./configure --help

3.1 Platform Specific Notes

• GNU/Linux in general

  Make sure you have /usr/local/lib in /etc/ld.so.conf and that you run ldconfig after installing. Uninstall any packaged version of WINDOW MAKER before installing a new version.

• RedHat GNU/Linux

  RedHat systems have several annoying problems. If you use it, be sure to follow the steps below or WINDOW MAKER will not work:

  • if you installed the WINDOW MAKER that comes with RedHat, uninstall it before upgrading;

  • make sure you have /usr/local/bin in your PATH environment variable;

  • make sure you have /usr/local/lib in /etc/ld.so.conf before running ldconfig;

• PowerPC MkLinux

  You will need to have the latest version of Xpmac. Older versions seem to have bugs that cause the system to hang.

• Debian GNU/Linux

  If you want JPEG and TIFF support, make sure you have libtiff-dev and libjpeg-dev installed.

• SuSE GNU/Linux

  If you installed the WINDOW MAKER package from SuSE, uninstall it before trying to compile Window Maker or you might have problems.

• MetroX (unknown version)

  MetroX has a bug that corrupts pixmaps that are set as window backgrounds. If you use MetroX and have weird problems with textures, do not use textures in title bars. Or use a different X server.

3.2 I don't have the root password :(

If you can't get superuser privileges (can't be root) you can install Window Maker in your own home directory. For that, supply the --prefix option when running configure in step 2 of building WINDOW MAKER. You will also need to supply the --with-gnustepdir option, to specify the path for WPrefs.app.

Example:

./configure --prefix=/home/jshmoe --with-gnustepdir=/home/jshmoe/GNUstep/Applications

Then make /home/jshmoe/bin be included in your search PATH, add /home/jshmoe/lib to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable and run bin/wmaker.inst

Of course, /home/jshmoe is supposed to be replaced by your actual home directory path.

3.3 Upgrading

If you are upgrading from an older version of WINDOW MAKER:

1. Configure and build WINDOW MAKER as always

2. Install WINDOW MAKER (but do not run wmaker.inst)

3. Read the NEWS file and update your configuration files if necessary.

4.1 Error with loading fonts, even if they exist

This is probably a problem with NLS (Native Language Support), you probably want to look at the Troubleshooting in README.i18n or try rebuilding without NLS support, which is done with:

./configure LINGUAS=""

4.2 configure doesn't detect libtiff, or other graphic libraries

Delete config.cache, then rerun configure adding the following options to configure (among the other options you use):

--with-libs-from="-L/usr/local/lib"
--with-incs-from="-I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include/tiff"

Put the paths where your graphic libs and their corresponding header files are located. You can put multiple paths in any of these options, as the example of --with-incs-from shows. Just put a space between them.

4.3 configure doesn't detect libXpm

Check if you have a symbolic link from libXpm.so.4.9 to libXpm.so

Segmentation fault on startup

• Check if the version of libXPM you have is at least 4.7

• Check if you have an updated version of ~/GNUstep/Defaults/WindowMaker

If you're not sure, try renaming ~/GNUstep to ~/GNUtmp and then run wmaker.inst

4.4 "...: your machine is misconfigured. gethostname() returned (none)"

the host name of your machine is set to something invalid, that starts with a parenthesis. Do a man hostname for info about how to set it.

4.5 The root menu contains only 2 entries. ("XTerm" and "Exit...")

WINDOW MAKER could not read your menu definition file. You should check the output of wmaker for an error, it may be visible in the console or in the .xsession-errors file.