Build and Installation
Once you have downloaded the source code, you can build Lite XL using Meson.
In addition, the build-packages.sh
script can be used to compile Lite XL and
create an OS-specific package for Linux, Windows or macOS.
The following libraries are required:
If they are not found, they will be downloaded and compiled by Meson. Otherwise, if they are present, they will be used to compile Lite XL.
Build Script
If you compile Lite XL yourself,
it is recommended to use build-packages.sh
:
The script will run Meson and create an archive with the application. Lite XL can be easily installed by unpacking the archive in any directory of your choice.
On Windows two packages will be created,
one called "portable" using the data
folder next to the executable
and the other one using a Unix-like file layout.
The portable version conforms to the directory structure of normal Windows programs
while the Unix-like file layout is meant for a Unix-like environment.
Lite XL does not hard-code any directories and instead relies on environment variables. This allows the package to be run in any directory.
Portable
When running meson setup
you may specify -Dportable=true
to install Lite XL as a portable application.
Lite XL needs the data
directory to run properly.
When portable
is enabled, Lite XL will use the data
directory placed next to the executable.
Otherwise, Lite XL will use Unix-like directory locations.
It will use $prefix/share/lite-xl
for data
and the executable will be located in $prefix/bin
.
$prefix
is determined when the application starts such that
$prefix/bin
corresponds to the location of the executable.
The user
directory does not depend on the portable
option
and will always be $HOME/.config/lite-xl
.
On Windows, $USERPROFILE
will be used instead of $HOME
.
Linux
On Debian-based systems the dependencies can be installed using the following commands:
# To install the required libraries:
sudo apt install libfreetype6-dev libsdl2-dev libpcre2-dev liblua5.4-dev
# To install Meson:
sudo apt install meson
# or pip3 install --user meson
To build Lite XL with Meson the commands below can be used:
meson setup --buildtype=release --prefix <prefix> build
meson compile -C build
DESTDIR="$(pwd)/lite-xl" meson install --skip-subprojects -C build
where <prefix>
depends on the OS you are using:
- on Linux is /usr
- on macOS application bundle can be "/Lite XL.app"
If you are using a version of Meson below 0.54 you need to use different commands to compile and install:
macOS
macOS is fully supported and a notarized app disk image is provided in GitHub Releases. In addition, the application can be compiled using the generic instructions given above.
Windows MSYS2
The build environment chosen for Lite XL on Windows is MSYS2. Follow the installation instructions in the link.
- Open
MinGW 64-bit
orMinGW 32-bit
shell from the start menu. - Update the MSYS2 installation with
pacman -Syu
- Restart the shell
- Install the dependencies:
pacman -S \
${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-freetype \
${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-gcc \
${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-ninja \
${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-pcre2 \
${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-pkg-config \
${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-python-pip \
${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}-SDL2
pip3 install meson
${MINGW_PACKAGE_PREFIX}
expands either to mingw-w64-i686
or mingw-w64-x86_64
depending on the current MSYS2 shell used.
You can also use pacboy with the :p
suffix.