1.4.2 Software requirements

We will need some additional libraries and tools to build Vicare Scheme.

GMP

Vicare uses the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library (GMP) for some bignum arithmetic operations. To build Vicare from scratch, GMP version 4.2 or better must be installed along with the required header files. Pre–built GMP packages are available for most operating systems. Alternatively, GMP can be downloaded from http://gmplib.org/.

The GMP web page points out that GMP has revealed subtle bugs in many C compilers. Although the GMP build process includes a comprehensive self–test (which we absolutely must run if building it ourselves), we may still prefer to obtain a prebuilt binary version for our system, if one is available.

NOTE Vicare runs in 32-bit mode only. To run it in 64-bit environments, we will have to obtain the 32-bit version of GMP, or compile it ourselves after adding ABI=32 to its configuration options.

libffi

We will probably need libffi, a C library that simplifies run–time calls to arbitrary C functions. Vicare will operate without libffi, but will not be able to call foreign procedures (those written in C). libffi can be downloaded from http://sourceware.org/libffi.

GCC

The GNU C Compiler is required to build the Vicare executable (e.g. the garbage collector, loader, and OS–related runtime). GCC versions 4.1 and 4.2 were successfully used to build Vicare. It may be possible to build Vicare using other C compilers.

Autoconf and Automake

The GNU Autoconf (version 2.61) and GNU Automake (version 1.10) tools are required if one wishes to modify the Vicare source base. They are not required to build the official release of Vicare.

Prebuilt packages for these tools have been created for most Unix/Linux systems; if we prefer, we can download the source code from http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf and http://www.gnu.org/software/automake respectively, and build them ourselves.

Texinfo

This document is provided in Texinfo format. Texinfo is available as an installable package for most Unix/Linux systems. Alternatively, we can download the source package http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo.