This page describes how to build PTLib from revision 2.4.2 (Wolf) or later. For information on building earlier releases of PTLib, see this page
PTLib is built from source using make
and configure
in the same way as most other Unix programs.
If you want to install PTLib into a shared location accessible by all users of the system (normally /usr/local), and you have root access, then you can use the default configure and install procedure Introduction described here.
If you want do not want to install PTLib into a shared location, because you do not have root access or because you want to have more than one version of PTLib on the same host, then follow this procedure.
You will need the following:
For Ubuntu etc, there are the following optional packages:
apt install g++ git make autoconf libpcap-dev libexpat-dev libssl1.0-dev libsasl2-dev libldap-dev \ unixodbc-dev liblua5.3-dev libv8-dev libncurses-dev libsdl2-dev libavformat-dev \ libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev
For CentOS, Fedora etc, use:
yum install g++ git make autoconf libpcap-devel expat-devel openssl-devel cyrus-sasl-devel openldap-devel \ unixODBC-devel lua-devel v8-devel ncurses-devel SDL2-devel libavformat-devel \ gstreamer1-devel gstreamer-plugins-base1-devel
By default, PTLib will install into the /usr/local tree. In order for other packages (including Opal) to locate PTLib, the directory /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig must be added to the search path for pkg-config. This is usually done by setting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable.
It is also necessary to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable so that programs can find the PTLib libraries at link or run time.
If you are using plugins, the PTLIBPLUGINDIR environment variable must be set to the location of the installed plugins. By default, this is /usr/local/lib/ptlib-minor.major.patch, where minor.major.patch is the version of PTlib being used.
For bash/sh
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib export PTLIBPLUGINDIR=/usr/local/lib/ptlib-minor.major.patch
For tcsh/csh
setenv PKG_CONFIG_PATH /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/lib setenv PTLIBPLUGINDIR /usr/local/lib/ptlib-minor.major.patch
Use the following command to build and install the release version (optimised) as a shared library
cd srcdir ./configure make sudo make install
Use the following command to build and install the release version (optimised) as a static library
cd srcdir ./configure --disable-shared make sudo make install
Use the following command to build and install the debug version (includes debugging symbols) as a shared library
cd srcdir ./configure --enable-debug make debug sudo make install
Use the following command to build and install the debug version (includes debugging symbols) as a static library
cd srcdir ./configure --enable-debug --disable-shared make debug sudo make install
Multiple versions can be built in the same directory tree and installed separately
Set the PTLIBDIR environment variable to point to srcdir as follows. This allows other libraries that use PTLib to find the code without using pkg-config.
IMPORTANT: you must set the environment variable before executing the configure script or the system will get very confused.
It is also necessary to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable so that programs can find the PTLib libraries at link or run time. The correct directory name depends on the host architecture:
For Linux x86 32 bit ${PTLIBDIR}/lib_linux_x86 For Linux x86 64 bit ${PTLIBDIR}/lib_linux_x86_64
If you are using plugins, the PTLIBPLUGINDIR environment variable must be set to the location of the compiled plugins. This will be the same directory as used above for the LD_LIBRARY_PATH
For bash/sh
export PTLIBDIR=srcdir export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${PTLIBDIR}/lib_linux_x86 export PTLIBPLUGINDIR=${PTLIBDIR}/lib_linux_x86
For tcsh/csh
setenv PTLIBDIR srcdir setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH ${PTLIBDIR}/lib_linux_x86 setenv PTLIBPLUGINDIR ${PTLIBDIR}/lib_linux_x86
Once this is done, configure and build the appropriate version of the code using the same commands as described in section 3 above, but omit the sudo make install
Note that it may be necessary to add /usr/local/lib to LD_LIBRARY_PATH and set PKG_CONFIG_PATH to /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig in order for other packages to be detected correctly.
If you are developer, it may be necessary to modify the configure.ac file and regenerate the configure script using autoconf.
The following message may appear
configure.ac:5: error: possibly undefined macro: dnl If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow. See the Autoconf documentation.
If this occurs, then you need to regnerate the aclocal.m4 file by running the following command:
aclocal