2 Installing MPFR

2.1 How to Install

Here are the steps needed to install the library on Unix systems (more details are provided in the INSTALL file):

1. To build MPFR, you first have to install GNU MP (version 4.1 or higher) on your computer. You need a C compiler, preferably GCC, but any reasonable compiler should work. And you need a standard Unix ‘make’ program, plus some other standard Unix utility programs.

   Then, in the MPFR build directory, type the following commands.

2. ‘./configure’

   This will prepare the build and setup the options according to your system. You can give options to specify the install directories (instead of the default /usr/local), threading support, and so on. See the INSTALL file and/or the output of ‘./configure --help’ for more information, in particular if you get error messages.

3. ‘make’

   This will compile MPFR, and create a library archive file libmpfr.a. On most platforms, a dynamic library will be produced too (see configure).

4. ‘make check’

   This will make sure MPFR was built correctly. If you get error messages, please report this to ‘mpfr@loria.fr’. (See Reporting Bugs, for information on what to include in useful bug reports.)

5. ‘make install’

   This will copy the files mpfr.h and mpf2mpfr.h to the directory /usr/local/include, the library files (libmpfr.a and possibly others) to the directory /usr/local/lib, the file mpfr.info to the directory /usr/local/share/info, and some other documentation files to the directory /usr/local/share/doc/mpfr (or if you passed the ‘--prefix’ option to configure, using the prefix directory given as argument to ‘--prefix’ instead of /usr/local).

2.2 Other `make' Targets

There are some other useful make targets:

• ‘mpfr.info’ or ‘info’

  Create or update an info version of the manual, in mpfr.info.

  This file is already provided in the MPFR archives.

• ‘mpfr.pdf’ or ‘pdf’

  Create a PDF version of the manual, in mpfr.pdf.

• ‘mpfr.dvi’ or ‘dvi’

  Create a DVI version of the manual, in mpfr.dvi.

• ‘mpfr.ps’ or ‘ps’

  Create a Postscript version of the manual, in mpfr.ps.

• ‘mpfr.html’ or ‘html’

  Create a HTML version of the manual, in several pages in the directory mpfr.html; if you want only one output HTML file, then type ‘makeinfo --html --no-split mpfr.texi’ instead.

• ‘clean’

  Delete all object files and archive files, but not the configuration files.

• ‘distclean’

  Delete all generated files not included in the distribution.

• ‘uninstall’

  Delete all files copied by ‘make install’.

2.3 Build Problems

In case of problem, please read the INSTALL file carefully before reporting a bug, in particular section “In case of problem”. Some problems are due to bad configuration on the user side (not specific to MPFR). Problems are also mentioned in the FAQ http://www.mpfr.org/faq.html.

Please report problems to ‘mpfr@loria.fr’. See Reporting Bugs. Some bug fixes are available on the MPFR 2.4.2 web page http://www.mpfr.org/mpfr-2.4.2/.

2.4 Getting the Latest Version of MPFR

The latest version of MPFR is available from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/mpfr/ or http://www.mpfr.org/.