To build wxMaxima from sources you need to have a C++ compiler, wxWidgets >= 3.0 (including development headers) and CMake >= 3.10 installed.
wxMaxima is built using the CMake build system.
The following steps will build and install wxMaxima using CMake. Assume you start inside wxmaxima source tree root folder. Then:
mkdir -p ../build-wxm # create a build directory
cd ../build-wxm # change to the build directory
cmake ../wxmaxima # configure the build
# ../wxmaxima is the path to the wxMaxima sources.
cmake --build . # build wxMaxima
# You can speed up the build, if you
# have multiple CPU cores, using
# cmake --build . -- -j 4
# (-j 4 means: Use 4 CPU cores).
# Adjust the number for your CPU.
sudo cmake --build . -- install # install it
You can use (or test) a fresh compiled wxMaxima (without installation) by calling
./wxmaxima-local from the build-directory.
If you want to install into a special prefix (not /usr/local), add
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/your/installation/prefix to the first
cmake invocation. E.g.
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/opt/wxmaxima ../wxmaxima
Of course you can use the CMake GUI (cmake-gui) or curses based CMake
(ccmake) for the configure step and change some CMake variables.
If you want to create binary packages (tar.gz, tar.bz2, DEB & RPM, on macOS also .dmg), the following command will create them:
cmake --build . -- package
This requires wxWidgets to be installed, e.G. using MacPorts
mkdir ../build-wxm
cmake -S . -B ../build-wxm -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=.
cmake --build ../build-wxm
cmake --build ../build-wxm --install
sudo apt-get install build-essential libwxbase3.0-dev libwxgtk3.0-gtk3-dev libwxgtk-webview3.0-gtk3-dev ibus-gtk ibus-gtk3 checkinstall gettext cmake pandoc po4a
beforehand or (if apt-get is configured to load the source package repositories and not only the binary packages) by the simpler
sudo apt-get build-dep wxmaxima
You must use the apt-get install command when the version you are building has dependencies which are not listed as dependencies in your distro's repository version of wxmaxima.
CentOS / Redhat have rather old versions of CMake and wxWidgets installed,
install cmake3 and wxGTK3-devel from the "Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL)"
repository, to compile wxMaxima. (and use cmake3 instead of cmake to call
the newer version of CMake in the commands above).
On macOS X you most probably need the command-line compiler one can tell Xcode to install. Additionally wxWidgets needs to be installed, which can be done using Homebrew, Fink or MacPorts and should be named wxWidgets or wxMac there. XCode versions older than version 13.0 have problems compiling wxMaxima.
Additional information about building on macOS:
You can install MinGW (https://osdn.net/projects/mingw/). In
the installation process make sure you select g++, MSYS Basic System
and MinGW Developer ToolKit in the Select components page
of the installer. Also select po4a, cmake and install pandoc.
Then run the MinGW Shell and follow the instructions for compiling
wxWidgets and wxMaxima with cmake.
Another compiler option would be MinGW-w64 (https://www.mingw-w64.org/).
You can also build using MS Visual Studio 2019 or newer. Since MSVS
provides adequate versions of both cmake and ninja, there's no need
to install those. The build has to start from within the x64 Native
Tools Command Prompt, and you have to first build wxWidgets before
you build wxmaxima. You can get some inspiration about how to do both
of these steps by examining the PowerShell scripts that do the building
within .appveyor.yml file.
These compilers come with two forms of thread support - win32 and posix. The win32 thread version does not support std::thread, which wxMaxima uses for multithreading, so be sure to install or reconfigure the posix version.
On Ubuntu Linux the crosscompiler x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++ can be
reconfigured using:
update-alternatives --config x86_64-w64-mingw32-g++
(For 32 bit the same works for the 32 bit crosscompiler i686-w64-mingw32-g++.)
Some information how to build for Android 9 can be found in the wxMaxima discussion forum: #1594
An HTML version of wxMaxima's source code documentation can be found at https://wxmaxima-developers.github.io/wxmaxima/Doxygen-documentation/
A local version of the documentation of wxMaxima's source can be
generated using doxygen and the doxygen target:
cmake --build ../build-wxm -- doxygen
CMake has currently (Feb 2022) problems finding a wxWidgets that was compiled using CMake. If that is the reason maybe wxWidgets was compiled without wxWebView. In that case
cmake -S . -B ../build-wxm -DWXM_DISABLE_WEBVIEW=on
might allow cmake to find wxWidgets at the cost of loosing the integrated dockable help browser.
On Linux, wxMaxima's test suite requires a display to work with.
Since you likely don't want the test suite to pollute your screen,
or may even be running a headless virtual machine without an X server,
the xvfb-run wrapper should be used:
xvfb-run ctest
On macOS or Windows, X displays aren't used, and the test suite can be run directly:
ctest
wxMaxima, if linked statically, is pretty standalone and therefore fit for creating a portable app:
- It only depends on one single library: wxWidgets, that can be linked statically,
- And besides a working maxima installation it only attempts to use two sets of external files: The manual and the translation files.
If a wxMaxima install should come without manual or translation files that might not be the end of the world, neither:
- If the translation files are not found, the program will still work, but will be using english.
- And if there are no manual files wxMaxima will redirect the system's web browser to an online version of the manual, instead.
If you have problems when compiling wxMaxima, maybe a look in the configurations
for various CI-Systems (.appveyor.yml and files in .github/workflows/)
may be helpful to see, how wxMaxima is compiled on these systems.