Building BOINC on Unix

The C++ part of BOINC consists of several components, divided into directories as follows:

client/: the BOINC client

clientgui/: the BOINC Manager (GUI for the client)

sched/, tools/: the BOINC server

api/: API for BOINC applications

samples/: wrappers and example applications

lib/: utility functions, used by all the above

NOTE: if you're creating or upgrading a BOINC project, you don't need the client software; participants can get that from the BOINC web site. You only need sched, tools, and maybe api.

To build components on Unix, first install the software prerequisites and get the BOINC source code. Then, in the source code directory, type

./_autosetup
./configure [see options below]
make

If you have updated the tools used by the build system (make, autotools, gcc, ...) since your last build, rebuild the files created by _autosetup using

./_autosetup -f

Configuration options

The configure command syntax is

./configure [OPTION]... [VAR=VALUE]...

You can use environment variables to override the choices made by configure or to help it to find libraries and programs with nonstandard names/locations. To assign environment variables (e.g., CC, CFLAGS...), specify them as VAR=VALUE. For example, to compile BOINC with strict compiler warnings, use

./configure CXXFLAGS="-Wall -W -Wshadow -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-qual -Wcast-align -Wwrite-strings -fno-common "

The options are as follows.

General options

-h, --help: display configuration options and exit.

Selecting components

Use configure options to select only the components you need.

--disable-COMPONENT: do not include COMPONENT (same as --enable-COMPONENT=no)

--enable-COMPONENT[=ARG]: include COMPONENT [ARG=yes]

For example:

--disable-server: disable building the server components

--disable-manager: disable building the manager (Disabled automatically if configure can't find wxWidgets)

--disable-client: disable building the client.

If you're creating a project, use

./configure --disable-client --disable-manager

To build the client and manager, use

./configure --disable-server

If you're developing or porting a BOINC application, you need only the API:

./configure --disable-server --disable-client --disable-manager

Build options

--enable-debug: enable tracing and debugging flags for all components (alternatively, include -g in CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS)

--enable-shared[=PKGS]: build shared libraries [default=yes]

--enable-static[=PKGS]: build static libraries [default=yes]

--disable-static-linkage: disable static linking of certain libraries

Optional Packages

--with-PACKAGE[=ARG]: use PACKAGE [ARG=yes]

--without-PACKAGE: do not use PACKAGE (same as --with-PACKAGE=no)

--with-x: use the X Window System

--with-apple-opengl-framework: use Apple OpenGL framework (Mac OS X only)

--with-wxdir=PATH: Use installed version of wxWidgets in PATH

--with-wx-config=CONFIG: wx-config script to use (optional)

Environment variables

CC: C compiler command

CFLAGS: C compiler flags

LDFLAGS: linker flags, e.g. -L<dir> if you have libraries in a nonstandard directory.

CPPFLAGS: C/C++ preprocessor flags, e.g. -I<dir> if you have headers in a nonstandard directory.

CXX: C++ compiler command

CXXFLAGS: C++ compiler flags.

CPP: C preprocessor

CXXCPP: C++ preprocessor

F77: Fortran 77 compiler command

FFLAGS: Fortran 77 compiler flags

MYSQL_CONFIG: path of mysql_config program

Building the client

Configure options:

--enable-client-release: Try building a portable 'release-candidate' (currently implemented for Linux and Solaris only): this links libstd++ statically. You will probably need gcc-3.0 for this to produce a portable client-binary. It is therefore recommended to use CC=gcc-3.0 and CXX=g++-3.0 for this. (Default = no)

--with-boinc-platform=NAME: Override the BOINC platform name determined by autoconf; i.e. Use NAME as platform to compile into the client. Only necessary if configure does not recognize your platform correctly by default. You can check the platform after the configure step by looking at the value of the HOSTTYPE variable in config.h

--with-boinc-alt-platform=NAME: Use this option to build an client that supports an alternate platform name. For example, on a x86_64 linux system that supports both 64 bit and 32 bit executables, you might specify --with-boinc-platform=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu and --with-boinc-alt-platform=i686-pc-linux-gnu.

To set the BOINC client version:

set-version 5.12.47

in the BOINC top-level source directory. This updates the AC_INIT line in configure.ac and regenerates files that use the version numbers (config.h, py/version.py, test/version.inc, client/win/win_config.h, Makefiles)

Adding new directories

The top-level Makefile.am contains the SUBDIRS= line which sets up directory recursion, and the rules for creating source distributions. Each subdirectory's Makefile.am contains the rules for making the binaries and libraries in that directory and any extra files to distribute. If you create a new directory with another Makefile.am, you should

• make sure the directory is referenced by a SUBDIRS= line from its parent Makefile.am
• add it to the AC_CONFIG_FILES directive in configure.ac.

Installation

In the resulting Makefile,

make install

(run as root) will install BOINC libraries in system directories.

Configure options:

--prefix=PREFIX: install architecture-independent files in PREFIX [/usr/local] By default, make install will install all the files in /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/lib etc. You can specify an installation prefix other than /usr/local using --prefix, for instance --prefix=.