8 1.2. Platform-specific notes
13 1.2.5. Solaris, OpenSolaris, and derivatives
18 1.3. Adding support for new platforms
20 2.1. Static vs. dynamic linking of liblzma
21 2.2. Optimizing xzdec and lzmadec
22 3. xzgrep and other scripts
26 4.1. "No C99 compiler was found."
27 4.2. "No POSIX conforming shell (sh) was found."
28 4.3. configure works but build fails at crc32_x86.S
29 4.4. Lots of warnings about symbol visibility
30 4.5. "make check" fails
31 4.6. liblzma.so (or similar) not found when running xz
37 If you aren't familiar with building packages that use GNU Autotools,
38 see the file INSTALL.generic for generic instructions before reading
41 If you are going to build a package for distribution, see also the
42 file PACKAGERS. It contains information that should help making the
43 binary packages as good as possible, but the information isn't very
44 interesting to those making local builds for private use or for use
45 in special situations like embedded systems.
48 1. Supported platforms
49 ----------------------
51 XZ Utils are developed on GNU/Linux, but they should work on many
52 POSIX-like operating systems like *BSDs and Solaris, and even on
53 a few non-POSIX operating systems.
58 A C99 compiler is required to compile XZ Utils. If you use GCC, you
59 need at least version 3.x.x. GCC version 2.xx.x doesn't support some
60 C99 features used in XZ Utils source code, thus GCC 2 won't compile
63 XZ Utils takes advantage of some GNU C extensions when building
64 with GCC. Because these extensions are used only when building
65 with GCC, it should be possible to use any C99 compiler.
68 1.2. Platform-specific notes
72 If you use IBM XL C compiler, pass CC=xlc_r to configure. If
73 you use CC=xlc instead, you must disable threading support
74 with --disable-threads (usually not recommended).
79 MIPSpro 7.4.4m has been reported to produce broken code if using
80 the -O2 optimization flag ("make check" fails). Using -O1 should
83 A problem has been reported when using shared liblzma. Passing
84 --disable-shared to configure works around this. Alternatively,
85 putting "-64" to CFLAGS to build a 64-bit version might help too.
90 The default install of MINIX 3 includes Amsterdam Compiler Kit (ACK),
91 which doesn't support C99. Install GCC to compile XZ Utils.
93 MINIX 3.1.8 and older have bugs in /usr/include/stdint.h, which has
94 to be patched before XZ Utils can be compiled correctly. See
95 <http://gforge.cs.vu.nl/gf/project/minix/tracker/?action=TrackerItemEdit&tracker_item_id=537>.
97 MINIX 3.2.0 and later use a different libc and aren't affected by
100 XZ Utils doesn't have code to detect the amount of physical RAM and
101 number of CPU cores on MINIX 3.
103 See section 4.4 in this file about symbol visibility warnings (you
104 may want to pass gl_cv_cc_visibility=no to configure).
109 XZ Utils can be built for OpenVMS, but the build system files
110 are not included in the XZ Utils source package. The required
111 OpenVMS-specific files are maintained by Jouk Jansen and can be
114 http://nchrem.tnw.tudelft.nl/openvms/software2.html#xzutils
117 1.2.5. Solaris, OpenSolaris, and derivatives
119 The following linker error has been reported on some x86 systems:
121 ld: fatal: relocation error: R_386_GOTOFF: ...
123 This can be worked around by passing gl_cv_cc_visibility=no
124 as an argument to the configure script.
126 test_scripts.sh in "make check" may fail if good enough tools are
127 missing from PATH (/usr/xpg4/bin or /usr/xpg6/bin). Nowadays
128 /usr/xpg4/bin is added to the script PATH by default on Solaris
129 (see --enable-path-for-scripts=PREFIX in section 2), but old xz
130 releases needed extra steps. See sections 4.5 and 3.2 for more
136 If you try to use the native C compiler on Tru64 (passing CC=cc to
137 configure), you may need the workaround mention in section 4.1 in
138 this file (pass also ac_cv_prog_cc_c99= to configure).
143 If it is enough to build liblzma (no command line tools):
145 - There is CMake support. It should be good enough to build
146 static liblzma or liblzma.dll with Visual Studio. The CMake
147 support may work with MinGW or MinGW-w64. Read the comment
148 in the beginning of CMakeLists.txt before running CMake!
150 - There are Visual Studio project files under the "windows"
151 directory. See windows/INSTALL-MSVC.txt. In the future the
152 project files will be removed when CMake support is good
153 enough. Thus, please test the CMake version and help fix
156 To build also the command line tools:
158 - MinGW-w64 + MSYS (32-bit and 64-bit x86): This is used
159 for building the official binary packages for Windows.
160 There is windows/build.bash to ease packaging XZ Utils with
161 MinGW(-w64) + MSYS into a redistributable .zip or .7z file.
162 See windows/INSTALL-MinGW.txt for more information.
164 - MinGW + MSYS (32-bit x86): I haven't recently tested this.
166 - Cygwin 1.7.35 and later: NOTE that using XZ Utils >= 5.2.0
167 under Cygwin older than 1.7.35 can lead to DATA LOSS! If
168 you must use an old Cygwin version, stick to XZ Utils 5.0.x
169 which is safe under older Cygwin versions. You can check
170 the Cygwin version with the command "cygcheck -V".
172 It may be possible to build liblzma with other toolchains too, but
173 that will probably require writing a separate makefile. Building
174 the command line tools with non-GNU toolchains will be harder than
175 building only liblzma.
177 Even if liblzma is built with MinGW(-w64), the resulting DLL can
178 be used by other compilers and linkers, including MSVC. See
179 windows/README-Windows.txt for details.
184 There is a Makefile in the "dos" directory to build XZ Utils on
185 DOS using DJGPP. Support for long file names (LFN) is needed at
186 build time but the resulting xz.exe works without LFN support too.
187 See dos/INSTALL.txt and dos/README.txt for more information.
192 To build XZ Utils on z/OS UNIX System Services using xlc, pass
193 these options to the configure script: CC='xlc -qhaltonmsg=CCN3296'
194 CPPFLAS='-D_UNIX03_THREADS -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600'. The first makes
195 xlc throw an error if a header file is missing, which is required
196 to make the tests in configure work. The CPPFLAGS are needed to
197 get pthread support (some other CPPFLAGS may work too; if there
198 are problems, try -D_UNIX95_THREADS instead of -D_UNIX03_THREADS).
200 test_scripts.sh in "make check" will fail even if the scripts
201 actually work because the test data includes compressed files
204 No other tests should fail. If test_files.sh fails, check that
205 the included .xz test files weren't affected by EBCDIC conversion.
207 XZ Utils doesn't have code to detect the amount of physical RAM and
208 number of CPU cores on z/OS.
211 1.3. Adding support for new platforms
213 If you have written patches to make XZ Utils to work on previously
214 unsupported platform, please send the patches to me! I will consider
215 including them to the official version. It's nice to minimize the
216 need of third-party patching.
218 One exception: Don't request or send patches to change the whole
219 source package to C89. I find C99 substantially nicer to write and
220 maintain. However, the public library headers must be in C89 to
221 avoid frustrating those who maintain programs, which are strictly
228 In most cases, the defaults are what you want. Many of the options
229 below are useful only when building a size-optimized version of
230 liblzma or command line tools.
232 --enable-encoders=LIST
234 Specify a comma-separated LIST of filter encoders to
235 build. See "./configure --help" for exact list of
236 available filter encoders. The default is to build all
239 If LIST is empty or --disable-encoders is used, no filter
240 encoders will be built and also the code shared between
241 encoders will be omitted.
243 Disabling encoders will remove some symbols from the
244 liblzma ABI, so this option should be used only when it
245 is known to not cause problems.
247 --enable-decoders=LIST
249 This is like --enable-encoders but for decoders. The
250 default is to build all supported decoders.
252 --enable-match-finders=LIST
253 liblzma includes two categories of match finders:
254 hash chains and binary trees. Hash chains (hc3 and hc4)
255 are quite fast but they don't provide the best compression
256 ratio. Binary trees (bt2, bt3 and bt4) give excellent
257 compression ratio, but they are slower and need more
258 memory than hash chains.
260 You need to enable at least one match finder to build the
261 LZMA1 or LZMA2 filter encoders. Usually hash chains are
262 used only in the fast mode, while binary trees are used to
263 when the best compression ratio is wanted.
265 The default is to build all the match finders if LZMA1
266 or LZMA2 filter encoders are being built.
269 liblzma support multiple integrity checks. CRC32 is
270 mandatory, and cannot be omitted. See "./configure --help"
271 for exact list of available integrity check types.
273 liblzma and the command line tools can decompress files
274 which use unsupported integrity check type, but naturally
275 the file integrity cannot be verified in that case.
277 Disabling integrity checks may remove some symbols from
278 the liblzma ABI, so this option should be used only when
279 it is known to not cause problems.
281 --enable-external-sha256
282 Try to use SHA-256 code from the operating system libc
283 or similar base system libraries. This doesn't try to
284 use OpenSSL or libgcrypt or such libraries.
286 The reasons to use this option:
288 - It makes liblzma slightly smaller.
290 - It might improve SHA-256 speed if the implementation
291 in the operating is very good (but see below).
293 External SHA-256 is disabled by default for two reasons:
295 - On some operating systems the symbol names of the
296 SHA-256 functions conflict with OpenSSL's libcrypto.
297 This causes weird problems such as decompression
298 errors if an application is linked against both
299 liblzma and libcrypto. This problem affects at least
300 FreeBSD 10 and older and MINIX 3.3.0 and older, but
301 other OSes that provide a function "SHA256_Init" might
302 also be affected. FreeBSD 11 has the problem fixed.
303 NetBSD had the problem but it was fixed it in 2009
304 already. OpenBSD uses "SHA256Init" and thus never had
305 a conflict with libcrypto.
307 - The SHA-256 code in liblzma is faster than the SHA-256
308 code provided by some operating systems. If you are
309 curious, build two copies of xz (internal and external
310 SHA-256) and compare the decompression (xz --test)
313 dd if=/dev/zero bs=1024k count=1024 \
314 | xz -v -0 -Csha256 > foo.xz
315 time xz --test foo.xz
318 Don't build MicroLZMA encoder and decoder. This omits
319 lzma_microlzma_encoder() and lzma_microlzma_decoder()
320 API functions from liblzma. These functions are needed
321 by specific applications only. They were written for
322 erofs-utils but they may be used by others too.
324 --disable-lzip-decoder
325 Disable decompression support for .lz (lzip) files.
326 This omits the API function lzma_lzip_decoder() from
327 liblzma and .lz support from the xz tool.
333 Don't build and install the command line tool mentioned
336 NOTE: Disabling xz will skip some tests in "make check".
338 NOTE: If xzdec is disabled and lzmadec is left enabled,
339 a dangling man page symlink lzmadec.1 -> xzdec.1 is
343 Don't create symlinks for LZMA Utils compatibility.
344 This includes lzma, unlzma, and lzcat. If scripts are
345 installed, also lzdiff, lzcmp, lzgrep, lzegrep, lzfgrep,
346 lzmore, and lzless will be omitted if this option is used.
349 Don't install the scripts xzdiff, xzgrep, xzmore, xzless,
353 Don't install the documentation files to $docdir
354 (often /usr/doc/xz or /usr/local/doc/xz). Man pages
355 will still be installed. The $docdir can be changed
359 liblzma includes some assembler optimizations. Currently
360 there is only assembler code for CRC32 and CRC64 for
363 All the assembler code in liblzma is position-independent
364 code, which is suitable for use in shared libraries and
365 position-independent executables. So far only i386
366 instructions are used, but the code is optimized for i686
367 class CPUs. If you are compiling liblzma exclusively for
368 pre-i686 systems, you may want to disable the assembler
372 Disable the use carryless multiplication for CRC
373 calculation even if compiler support for it is detected.
374 The code uses runtime detection of SSSE3, SSE4.1, and
375 CLMUL instructions on x86. On 32-bit x86 this currently
376 is used only if --disable-assembler is used (this might
377 be fixed in the future). The code works on E2K too.
379 If using compiler options that unconditionally allow the
380 required extensions (-msse4.1 -mpclmul) then runtime
381 detection isn't used and the generic code is omitted.
383 --enable-unaligned-access
384 Allow liblzma to use unaligned memory access for 16-bit,
385 32-bit, and 64-bit loads and stores. This should be
386 enabled only when the hardware supports this, that is,
387 when unaligned access is fast. Some operating system
388 kernels emulate unaligned access, which is extremely
389 slow. This option shouldn't be used on systems that
390 rely on such emulation.
392 Unaligned access is enabled by default on x86, x86-64,
393 big endian PowerPC, some ARM, and some ARM64 systems.
395 --enable-unsafe-type-punning
396 This enables use of code like
399 *(uint32_t *)buf8 = ...;
401 which violates strict aliasing rules and may result
402 in broken code. There should be no need to use this
403 option with recent GCC or Clang versions on any
404 arch as just as fast code can be generated in a safe
405 way too (using __builtin_assume_aligned + memcpy).
407 However, this option might improve performance in some
408 other cases, especially with old compilers (for example,
409 GCC 3 and early 4.x on x86, GCC < 6 on ARMv6 and ARMv7).
412 Reduce the size of liblzma by selecting smaller but
413 semantically equivalent version of some functions, and
414 omit precomputed lookup tables. This option tends to
415 make liblzma slightly slower.
417 Note that while omitting the precomputed tables makes
418 liblzma smaller on disk, the tables are still needed at
419 run time, and need to be computed at startup. This also
420 means that the RAM holding the tables won't be shared
421 between applications linked against shared liblzma.
423 This option doesn't modify CFLAGS to tell the compiler
424 to optimize for size. You need to add -Os or equivalent
425 flag(s) to CFLAGS manually.
427 --enable-assume-ram=SIZE
428 On the most common operating systems, XZ Utils is able to
429 detect the amount of physical memory on the system. This
430 information is used by the options --memlimit-compress,
431 --memlimit-decompress, and --memlimit when setting the
432 limit to a percentage of total RAM.
434 On some systems, there is no code to detect the amount of
435 RAM though. Using --enable-assume-ram one can set how much
436 memory to assume on these systems. SIZE is given as MiB.
437 The default is 128 MiB.
439 Feel free to send patches to add support for detecting
440 the amount of RAM on the operating system you use. See
441 src/common/tuklib_physmem.c for details.
443 --enable-threads=METHOD
444 Threading support is enabled by default so normally there
445 is no need to specify this option.
447 Supported values for METHOD:
449 yes Autodetect the threading method. If none
450 is found, configure will give an error.
452 posix Use POSIX pthreads. This is the default
453 except on Windows outside Cygwin.
455 win95 Use Windows 95 compatible threads. This
456 is compatible with Windows XP and later
457 too. This is the default for 32-bit x86
458 Windows builds. The `win95' threading is
459 incompatible with --enable-small.
461 vista Use Windows Vista compatible threads. The
462 resulting binaries won't run on Windows XP
463 or older. This is the default for Windows
464 excluding 32-bit x86 builds (that is, on
465 x86-64 the default is `vista').
467 no Disable threading support. This is the
468 same as using --disable-threads.
469 NOTE: If combined with --enable-small
470 and the compiler doesn't support
471 __attribute__((__constructor__)), the
472 resulting liblzma won't be thread safe,
473 that is, if a multi-threaded application
474 calls any liblzma functions from more than
475 one thread, something bad may happen.
477 --enable-sandbox=METHOD
478 There is limited sandboxing support in the xz tool. If
479 built with sandbox support, it's used automatically when
480 (de)compressing exactly one file to standard output and
481 the options --files or --files0 weren't used. This is a
482 common use case, for example, (de)compressing .tar.xz
483 files via GNU tar. The sandbox is also used for
484 single-file `xz --test' or `xz --list'.
488 auto Look for a supported sandboxing method
489 and use it if found. If no method is
490 found, then sandboxing isn't used.
493 no Disable sandboxing support.
496 Use Capsicum (FreeBSD >= 10) for
497 sandboxing. If no Capsicum support
498 is found, configure will give an error.
500 pledge Use pledge(2) (OpenBSD >= 5.9) for
501 sandboxing. If pledge(2) isn't found,
502 configure will give an error.
504 --enable-symbol-versions
505 Use symbol versioning for liblzma. This is enabled by
506 default on GNU/Linux, other GNU-based systems, and
510 This enables the assert() macro and possibly some other
511 run-time consistency checks. It makes the code slower, so
512 you normally don't want to have this enabled.
515 If building with GCC, make all compiler warnings an error,
516 that abort the compilation. This may help catching bugs,
517 and should work on most systems. This has no effect on the
520 --enable-path-for-scripts=PREFIX
521 If PREFIX isn't empty, PATH=PREFIX:$PATH will be set in
522 the beginning of the scripts (xzgrep and others).
523 The default is empty except on Solaris the default is
526 This can be useful if the default PATH doesn't contain
527 modern POSIX tools (as can be the case on Solaris) or if
528 one wants to ensure that the correct xz binary is in the
529 PATH for the scripts. Note that the latter use can break
530 "make check" if the prefixed PATH causes a wrong xz binary
531 (other than the one that was just built) to be used.
533 Older xz releases support a different method for setting
534 the PATH for the scripts. It is described in section 3.2
535 and is supported in this xz version too.
538 2.1. Static vs. dynamic linking of liblzma
540 On 32-bit x86, linking against static liblzma can give a minor
541 speed improvement. Static libraries on x86 are usually compiled as
542 position-dependent code (non-PIC) and shared libraries are built as
543 position-independent code (PIC). PIC wastes one register, which can
544 make the code slightly slower compared to a non-PIC version. (Note
545 that this doesn't apply to x86-64.)
547 If you want to link xz against static liblzma, the simplest way
548 is to pass --disable-shared to configure. If you want also shared
549 liblzma, run configure again and run "make install" only for
553 2.2. Optimizing xzdec and lzmadec
555 xzdec and lzmadec are intended to be relatively small instead of
556 optimizing for the best speed. Thus, it is a good idea to build
557 xzdec and lzmadec separately:
559 - To link the tools against static liblzma, pass --disable-shared
562 - To select somewhat size-optimized variant of some things in
563 liblzma, pass --enable-small to configure.
565 - Tell the compiler to optimize for size instead of speed.
566 For example, with GCC, put -Os into CFLAGS.
568 - xzdec and lzmadec will never use multithreading capabilities of
569 liblzma. You can avoid dependency on libpthread by passing
570 --disable-threads to configure.
572 - There are and will be no translated messages for xzdec and
573 lzmadec, so it is fine to pass also --disable-nls to configure.
575 - Only decoder code is needed, so you can speed up the build
576 slightly by passing --disable-encoders to configure. This
577 shouldn't affect the final size of the executables though,
578 because the linker is able to omit the encoder code anyway.
580 If you have no use for xzdec or lzmadec, you can disable them with
581 --disable-xzdec and --disable-lzmadec.
584 3. xzgrep and other scripts
585 ---------------------------
589 POSIX shell (sh) and bunch of other standard POSIX tools are required
590 to run the scripts. The configure script tries to find a POSIX
591 compliant sh, but if it fails, you can force the shell by passing
592 gl_cv_posix_shell=/path/to/posix-sh as an argument to the configure
595 xzdiff (xzcmp/lzdiff/lzcmp) may use mktemp if it is available. As
596 a fallback xzdiff will use mkdir to securely create a temporary
597 directory. Having mktemp available is still recommended since the
598 mkdir fallback method isn't as robust as mktemp is. The original
599 mktemp can be found from <https://www.mktemp.org/>. On GNU, most will
600 use the mktemp program from GNU coreutils instead of the original
601 implementation. Both mktemp versions are fine.
603 In addition to using xz to decompress .xz files, xzgrep and xzdiff
604 use gzip, bzip2, and lzop to support .gz, bz2, and .lzo files.
609 The method described below is supported by older xz releases.
610 It is supported by the current version too, but the newer
611 --enable-path-for-scripts=PREFIX described in section 2 may be
614 The scripts assume that the required tools (standard POSIX utilities,
615 mktemp, and xz) are in PATH; the scripts don't set the PATH themselves
616 (except as described for --enable-path-for-scripts=PREFIX). Some
617 people like this while some think this is a bug. Those in the latter
618 group can easily patch the scripts before running the configure script
619 by taking advantage of a placeholder line in the scripts.
621 For example, to make the scripts prefix /usr/bin:/bin to PATH:
623 perl -pi -e 's|^#SET_PATH.*$|PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:\$PATH|' \
630 4.1. "No C99 compiler was found."
632 You need a C99 compiler to build XZ Utils. If the configure script
633 cannot find a C99 compiler and you think you have such a compiler
634 installed, set the compiler command by passing CC=/path/to/c99 as
635 an argument to the configure script.
637 If you get this error even when you think your compiler supports C99,
638 you can override the test by passing ac_cv_prog_cc_c99= as an argument
639 to the configure script. The test for C99 compiler is not perfect (and
640 it is not as easy to make it perfect as it sounds), so sometimes this
641 may be needed. You will get a compile error if your compiler doesn't
645 4.2. "No POSIX conforming shell (sh) was found."
647 xzgrep and other scripts need a shell that (roughly) conforms
648 to POSIX. The configure script tries to find such a shell. If
649 it fails, you can force the shell to be used by passing
650 gl_cv_posix_shell=/path/to/posix-sh as an argument to the configure
651 script. Alternatively you can omit the installation of scripts and
652 this error by passing --disable-scripts to configure.
655 4.3. configure works but build fails at crc32_x86.S
657 The easy fix is to pass --disable-assembler to the configure script.
659 The configure script determines if assembler code can be used by
660 looking at the configure triplet; there is currently no check if
661 the assembler code can actually actually be built. The x86 assembler
662 code should work on x86 GNU/Linux, *BSDs, Solaris, Darwin, MinGW,
663 Cygwin, and DJGPP. On other x86 systems, there may be problems and
664 the assembler code may need to be disabled with the configure option.
666 If you get this error when building for x86-64, you have specified or
667 the configure script has misguessed your architecture. Pass the
668 correct configure triplet using the --build=CPU-COMPANY-SYSTEM option
669 (see INSTALL.generic).
672 4.4. Lots of warnings about symbol visibility
674 On some systems where symbol visibility isn't supported, GCC may
675 still accept the visibility options and attributes, which will make
676 configure think that visibility is supported. This will result in
677 many compiler warnings. You can avoid the warnings by forcing the
678 visibility support off by passing gl_cv_cc_visibility=no as an
679 argument to the configure script. This has no effect on the
680 resulting binaries, but fewer warnings looks nicer and may allow
681 using --enable-werror.
684 4.5. "make check" fails
686 If the other tests pass but test_scripts.sh fails, then the problem
687 is in the scripts in src/scripts. Comparing the contents of
688 tests/xzgrep_test_output to tests/xzgrep_expected_output might
689 give a good idea about problems in xzgrep. One possibility is that
690 some tools are missing from the current PATH or the tools lack
691 support for some POSIX features. This can happen at least on
692 Solaris where the tools in /bin may be ancient but good enough
693 tools are available in /usr/xpg4/bin or /usr/xpg6/bin. For possible
694 fixes, see --enable-path-for-scripts=PREFIX in section 2 and the
695 older alternative method described in section 3.2 of this file.
697 If tests other than test_scripts.sh fail, a likely reason is that
698 libtool links the test programs against an installed version of
699 liblzma instead of the version that was just built. This is
700 obviously a bug which seems to happen on some platforms.
701 A workaround is to uninstall the old liblzma versions first.
703 If the problem isn't any of those described above, then it's likely
704 a bug in XZ Utils or in the compiler. See the platform-specific
705 notes in this file for possible known problems. Please report
706 a bug if you cannot solve the problem. See README for contact
710 4.6. liblzma.so (or similar) not found when running xz
712 If you installed the package with "make install" and get an error
713 about liblzma.so (or a similarly named file) being missing, try
714 running "ldconfig" to update the run-time linker cache (if your
715 operating system has such a command).