Copyright (C) 1989, 1990, 1991 Aladdin Enterprises. All rights reserved.
Distributed by Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This file is part of Ghostscript.
Ghostscript is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. No author or distributor accepts responsibility
to anyone for the consequences of using it or for whether it serves any
particular purpose or works at all, unless he says so in writing. Refer
to the Ghostscript General Public License for full details.
Everyone is granted permission to copy, modify and redistribute
Ghostscript, but only under the conditions described in the Ghostscript
General Public License. A copy of this license is supposed to have been
given to you along with Ghostscript so you can know your rights and
responsibilities. It should be in a file named COPYING. Among other
things, the copyright notice and this notice must be preserved on all
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
This file, make.doc, describes how to install Ghostscript, and how to
build Ghostscript executables from source.
For an overview of Ghostscript and a list of the documentation files, see
******** Installing Ghostscript
To install the interpreter, you need:
- The interpreter executable:
- On MS-DOS and VMS systems, gs.exe.
- On MS-DOS systems, if you are using the Watcom compiler,
the DOS extender, dos4gw.exe.
- The interpreter initialization files: gs_*.ps and sym__enc.ps.
- The default font: uglyr.gsf.
See use.doc for a description of the search algorithm used to find these
You do not need any of these files when using the library; however, the
library currently provides no way to install fonts. This is obviously
ridiculous and will be fixed sometime in the future.
******** Building Ghostscript from source
Ghostscript is generally distributed in the form of a compressed tar file.
When unpacked, this file puts all the Ghostscript files in a directory
called gs. Ghostscript is also available in the form of PC-compatible ZIP
Ghostscript is described by a collection of several makefiles:
gs.mak - a generic makefile used on all platforms (except VMS).
devs.mak - a makefile listing all the device drivers.
*.mak - the makefiles for specific platforms.
You may need to edit the platform-specific makefile if you wish to change
any of the following options:
- The default search path(s) for the initialization and font files
- The debugging options (macro TDEBUG);
- The set of device drivers to be included (DEVICE_DEVS
and DEVICE_DEVS2..5 macros);
- The set of optional features to be included (FEATURE_DEVS macro).
The platform-specific makefile will include comments describing all of
these items except the DEVICE_DEVS options. The DEVICE_DEVS options are
described in devs.mak, even though the file that must be edited is the
platform-specific makefile.
The makefiles distributed with Ghostscript define these options as
- GS_LIB_DEFAULT: on Unix systems, the current directory at build
time; on MS-DOS systems, C:\GS.
- TDEBUG: no debugging code included in the build.
- DEVICE_DEVS: platform-specific, see below.
- FEATURE_DEVS: platform-specific.
There are also platform-specific options described below under the
individual platforms. See the "Options" section near the beginning of the
relevant makefile for more information.
If you are including a dot-matrix printer driver, you may wish to
customize the default resolution parameters in devs.mak.
To build the interpreter, you need all the .h and .c files (and .asm files
for MS-DOS) included in the distribution, as well as the makefiles.
removes all the files created by the build process (relocatables,
executables, and miscellaneous scratch files). If you want to save the
executable, you should move it to another directory first.
******** How to build Ghostscript from source (MS-DOS version) ********
The makefiles distributed with Ghostscript select the following
devices for inclusion in the executable:
Epson-compatible dot matrix printers
(default resolution 180 x 180 DPI)
Canon BJ-10e (BubbleJet) printer
(default resolution 360 x 360 DPI)
Borland C++: all of the above, plus:
H-P DeskJet and LaserJet family printers
(default resolution 300 DPI)
Watcom C/386: all of the above, plus:
(partial) Display PostScript and PostScript Level 2 features
Tseng ET3000/ET4000 SuperVGA displays
These options were chosen to strike a balance between RAM consumption and
likely usefulness. (Turbo C is limited to 640K and does not support code
overlaying; Borland C++ is limited to 640K, but supports code overlaying;
Watcom C/386 is not limited to 640K.)
To build Ghostscript, you need MS-DOS version 3.3 or later, and a Borland
C/C++ development system or the Watcom C/386 development system. Details
As noted above, the default configuration generates an executable that
assumes the directory where 'make' was run should be the final default
directory for looking up the Ghostscript initialization and font files.
To build the Ghostscript executable, all you need to do is give the
You must have COMMAND.COM in your path to build Ghostscript.
There is a special 'make' target that simply attempts to compile all the
.c files in the current directory. Some of these compilations will fail,
but the ones that succeed will go considerably faster, because they don't
individually pay the overhead of loading the compiler into memory. So a
good strategy for building the executable for the first time, or after a
change to a very widely used .h file, is:
to do the compilations that failed the first time.
Note: if you get the Ghostscript sources from a Unix 'tar' file and unpack
the file on a MS-DOS machine, the files will all have linefeed instead of
carriage return + linefeed as the line terminator, which will make the C
compiler unhappy. I don't know the simplest way to fix this: just reading
each file into an editor and writing it back out again may be sufficient.
To compile Ghostscript with the Borland environment, you need either Turbo
C (version 2.0 or later) or Turbo C++ or Borland C++ (version 1.0 or
later); specifically, the compiler, 'make' utility, and linker. You also
need either the Borland assembler (version 1.0 or later) or the Microsoft
assembler (version 4.0 or later). Before compiling or linking, you should
echo !include "turboc.mak" >makefile
echo !include "tbcplus.mak" >makefile
(for Turbo C++ or Borland C++).
Besides the source files and the makefiles, you need:
turboc.cfg (the flags and switches for Turbo C)
gt.tr (the linker commands for the library test program - optional)
gs.tr (the linker commands for the interpreter)
*.bat (a variety of batch files used in the build process)
There are extensive comments in the turboc.mak and tbcplus.mak files
regarding various configuration parameters. If your configuration is
different from the following, you should definitely read those comments
and see if you want or need to change any of the parameters:
- The compiler files are in c:\tc (for Turbo C) or c:\bc (for
Turbo C++ or Borland C++) and its subdirectories.
- You are using the Borland assembler (tasm).
- You want an executable that will run on any PC-compatible,
regardless of processor type (8088, 8086, V20, 80186, 80286, V30, 80386,
80486) and regardless of whether a math coprocessor (80x87) is present.
To avoid annoying messages from the DOS extender, add the line
to your autoexec.bat file.
To compile Ghostscript with the Watcom C/386 compiler, you need to create
echo !include watc.mak >makefile
To build Ghostscript, execute
******** How to build Ghostscript from source (Unix version) ********
The makefile distributed with Ghostscript selects the following devices
for inclusion in the build:
Before compiling or linking, you should execute
ln -s unix-cc.mak makefile
or ln -s unix-gcc.mak makefile
or ln -s unix-ansi.mak makefile
depending on whether your C compiler is a standard Kernighan & Ritchie C
compiler, gcc being used in ANSI mode, or an ANSI C compiler other than
gcc respectively. (If you want to use gcc in non-ANSI mode, use
unix-cc.mak and define the CC macro to refer to gcc.)
If the X11 client header files are located in some directory which your
compiler does not automatically search, you must change the XINCLUDE macro
the makefile to include a specific -I switch. See the comment preceding
XINCLUDE in the makefile.
The only important customization of the X11 driver is the choice of
whether or not to use a backing pixmap. If you use a backing pixmap,
Ghostscript windows will redisplay properly when they are covered and
exposed, but drawing operations will go slower. This choice is controlled
by a line in the file gdevx.c that says
private int use_backing = 1;
Changing this line to read
private int use_backing = 0;
will disable the use of a backing pixmap. However, portions of the
Ghostscript window may not be properly redrawn after the window is
restored from an icon or exposed after being occluded by another window.
Some versions of the X server do not implement tiling properly. This will
show up as broad bands of color where dither patterns should appear. If
private int use_XSetTile = 1;
private int use_XSetTile = 0;
and recompile. The result will run a lot slower, but the output should be
correct. If this fixes the problem, report it to whoever made your X
Similarly, some versions of the X server do not implement bitmap/pixmap
displaying properly. This may show up as white or black rectangles where
characters should appear, or characters may appear in "inverse video"
(e.g., white on a black rectangle). If this happens, it may help you to
private int use_XPutImage = 1;
private int use_XPutImage = 0;
and recompile. Again, there will be a serious performance penalty; again,
if this fixes the problem, notify the supplier of your X server.
Currently Ghostscript is set up to compile and link in a generic Unix
environment. Some Unix environments may require changing the LDFLAGS
All you need to do to make an executable is invoke the shell command
Ghostscript uses ANSI syntax for function definitions. Because of this,
when compiling with cc, it must preprocess each .c file to convert it to
the older syntax defined in Kernighan and Ritchie, which is what most
current Unix compilers (other than gcc) support. This step is
automatically performed by a utility called ansi2knr, which is included in
the Ghostscript distribution. The makefile automatically builds ansi2knr.
The ansi2knr preprocessing step is included in the makefile rule for
compiling .c files. ansi2knr creates a file called _temp_.c to hold the
converted code. If you want to change this name for some reason, it is
Note that the abovementioned makefiles are actually generated mechanically
from *head.mak, *tail.mak, gs.mak, and devs.mak. If you want to change
the makefile, edit the appropriate one of these files, and then invoke the
shell script to reconstruct the unix-*.mak makefile.
There is apparently a bug in the MIPS C compiler which causes
gxdither.c to compile incorrectly if optimization is enabled (-O). Until
a work-around is found, do not use -O with the MIPS C compiler.
You must run the compiler in ANSI-compatible mode (i.e., set AK=
<null string> in the makefile); otherwise, it gives incorrect error
messages for any function declared as returning a float value.
Due to a compiler bug, if you are building Ghostscript on an Intel
80386 system using a version of gcc older than version 1.38, you must not
Any platform with GNU make:
GNU make 3.59 can't handle the final linking step in some cases;
use the platform's standard make (e.g., /bin/make) if this happens.
The Sun unbundled C compiler (SC1.0) doesn't compile Ghostscript
properly if the -fast option is selected: Ghostscript core-dumps in
build_gs_font. Use -g, or use gcc.
The standard Sun cc may not compile iscan.c correctly if
optimization (-O) is selected. One symptom is that numbers such as 1.e-3
give a syntax error. This has been observed on a SPARCstation running
SunOS 4.1.1. If this happens, use -g for this file, or use gcc.
IBM RS/6000, you must define _POSIX_SOURCE and you must use the
c89 compiler, not cc, e.g.:
make -f unix-ansi.mak CC=c89 XCFLAGS=-D_POSIX_SOURCE \
XINCLUDE=-I/usr/misc/X11/include XLIBDIRS=-L/usr/misc/X11/lib
Apparently some (but not all) releases of the C library declare the hypot
function: if the declaration in math_.h produces an error message, try
removing it. Also, the IBM X11R3 server is known to be buggy: use the MIT
X server if possible. Even beyond all this, many people have trouble with
Ghostscript on the RS/6000. The usual symptom is that it compiles and
links OK, but produces garbaged output on the screen. The problem may be
related to particular versions of AIX or the X server; we don't have
enough information at this time. The following combinations of AIX and X
AIX 3.1.5, MIT X11R4, c89
The following combinations are known to work:
AIX 3.1.5, MIT X11R5, c89
For ISC Unix with gcc, an appropriate make invocation is:
make XCFLAGS="-D__SVR3 -posix" LDFLAGS="-shlib -posix" \
EXTRALIBS="-linet -lnsl_s"
If this doesn't work for you, try removing the -shlib.
The SCO Unix C compiler apparently can't handle the Pn macros in
std.h. If you get strange compilation errors on SCO Unix, see if you can
get a compiler fix from SCO. Meanwhile, to use gcc with SCO ODT, see
gcc-head.mak for the appropriate switch settings.
Many versions of DEC's X server (DECwindows) have bugs that
require setting use_XPutImage or use_XSetTile to 0, as described above.
You may need to use +O1 rather than -O to get the compiler to
******** How to build Ghostscript from source (VAX/VMS version) ********
The files VMS-CC.MAK and VMS-GCC.MAK are VMS DCL command files which
build Ghostscript from scratch using either the DEC C compiler, CC, or
the Free Software Foundation's GNU C compiler, GCC. Accordingly, you
must have one of these two compilers installed in order to build
Ghostscript. (Other C compilers may work: CC and GCC are the only two
compilers tested to date.) These two command files build and store
the Ghostscript library in the object library GS.OLB. If you have
DECwindows (X11) installed on your system, the executable images GS.EXE,
GT.EXE, and XLIB.EXE will also be built.
The only important customization of the X11 driver is the choice of
whether or not to use a backing pixmap. If you use a backing pixmap,
Ghostscript windows will redisplay properly when they are covered and
exposed, but drawing operations will go slower. This choice is controlled
by the line in the file gdevx.c that reads
private int use_backing = 1;
Changing this line to read
private int use_backing = 0;
will disable the use of a backing pixmap. However, portions of the
Ghostscript window may not be properly redrawn after the window is
restored from an icon or exposed after being occluded by another window.
Many versions of DEC's X server (DECwindows) have bugs that require
setting use_XPutImage or use_XSetTile to 0, as described above. These
show up as broad bands of color where dither patterns should appear, or
characters displayed white on top of black rectangles or not displayed at
all. If this happens, change use_XSetTile or use_XPutImage to 0 as
described above. The result will run a lot slower, but the output will be
correct. Report the problem to DEC, or whoever supplied your X server.
Ghostscript uses ANSI syntax for function definitions. Thus, when using
the DEC C compiler, each .C file is converted to the older C syntax defined
in the first edition of Kernighan and Ritchie and stored in a .CC file.
This step is performed by VMS-CC.MAK using the ansi2knr utility included
in the Ghostscript distribution. If you are building a debuggable
configuration, the .CC files will be left behind by VMS-CC.MAK for use by
the VMS Debugger; otherwise, they will be deleted.
If you have DEC's C compiler, issue the DCL command
to build Ghostscript. If you have GNU C, issue the DCL command
The option "DEBUG" may be specified with either command file in order to
build a debuggable Ghostscript configuration:
$ @VMS-CC.MAK DEBUG -or- $ @VMS-GCC.MAK DEBUG
In order to specify switches and file names when invoking the interpreter,
define GS as a foreign command:
$ GS == "$disk:[directory]GS.EXE"
where "disk" and "directory" specify the disk and directory where Ghostscript
is located. For instance,
$ GS == "$DUA1:[GHOSTSCRIPT]GS.EXE"
To allow the interpreter to be run from any directory, define the logical
GS_LIB which points to the Ghostscript directory
$ DEFINE GS_LIB disk:[directory]
This allows Ghostscript to locate its initialization files stored in the
Ghostscript directory -- see use.doc for further details. Finally, to
invoke the interpreter, merely type GS. Although DCL normally converts
unquoted parameters to upper case, C programs receive their parameters in
lower case. That is, the command
passes the switch "-isys$login" to the interpreter. To preserve the
case of switches, enclose them in double quotes; e.g.,
******** A guide to the files ********
There are very few machine dependencies in Ghostscript. A few of the .c
files are machine-specific. These have names of the form
There are also some machine-specific conditionals in files with names
<something>_.h, and in gdevmem.c. If you are going to extend Ghostscript
to new machines or operating systems, you should check all the source
files (both .c and .h) for ifdef's on things other than DEBUG, and you
should probably count on making a new makefile and a new gp_ file.
gt.c is a test driver for the library.
Files beginning with gs, gx, or gz (both .c and .h), other than gs.c, are
the Ghostscript library. Files beginning with gdev are device drivers or
related code, also part of the library. Other files beginning with g are
library files that don't fall neatly into either the kernel or the driver
gs.c is the main program for the language interpreter.
Files beginning with z are Ghostscript operator files. The names of the
files generally follow the section headings of the operator summary in
section 6.2 of the PostScript manual.
.c files beginning with i, and .h files not beginning with g, are the
rest of the interpreter. See the makefile for a little more information
on how the files are divided functionally.
There are a few files that are logically part of the interpreter, but that
are potentially useful outside Ghostscript, whose names don't begin with
s*.c (a flexible stream package, including the Level 2 PostScript
'filters' supported by Ghostscript);
trace.c (a procedure tracing package for debugging) and utrace.c
(the Unix stub for trace.c).
projects / unix-history / blob