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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.
  2. In the MPFR build directory, type ‘./configure

    This will prepare the build and setup the options according to your system. If you get error messages, you might check that you use the same compiler and compile options as for GNU MP (see the INSTALL file).

  3. make

    This will compile MPFR, and create a library archive file libmpfr.a. A dynamic library may 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 file libmpfr.a to the directory /usr/local/lib, and the file mpfr.info to the directory /usr/local/share/info (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:

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 2.4.1 web page http://www.mpfr.org/mpfr-2.4.1/.

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/.