4.4.2 Running autogen.sh

(If you use a tarball, follow the instructions in this subsection but don’t actually run the autogen.sh script – the tarball already comes with a configure script.)

After cloning the Git repository or downloading and unpacking a Git snapshot, the contents of your top source directory should be similar to the current source tree listed at https://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=lilypond.git;a=tree.

Note that the top-level source directory is called lilypond-2.25.21/ if you use the tarball. It is called lilypond-HEAD-ID/ if you use a Git snapshot, with ID being a hexadecimal, seven-digit number (for example, lilypond-HEAD-80113f7/). It is simply called lilypond/ if you directly use the Git clone, and we use this in the following instructions.

Start with changing to the source directory, creating a build directory, and changing into it.

cd lilypond/
mkdir build/
cd build/

Because there are no generated files in the repository, you have to generate the configure script first. There are two possibilities to do that.

• Generate the configure script in the top-level source directory. This is what the instructions below do.
• Using autogen.sh’s --currdir option it is possible to generate the configure script in the build directory. We don’t cover this slightly more complicated setup here.

(If you omit the --noconfigure option, autogen.sh not only creates the configure script but also executes it, forwarding all given command-line options. This is a convenient shorthand for experienced users. For clarity, however, we explain the process in two separate steps.)

Execute the autogen.sh script now.

../autogen.sh --noconfigure