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2.2 Configure

The first step is to configure the source code, telling it where various files will be. To do so, run

     ./configure options

(Note: if you have fetched preview-latex from CVS rather than a regular release, you will have to first generate ./configure by running autogen.sh in the preview directory.)

On many machines, you will not need to specify any options, but if configure cannot determine something on its own, you'll need to help it out with one of these options:

--with-emacs[=/path/to/emacs]
If you are using a pretest which isn't in your $PATH, or configure is not finding the right Emacs executable, you can specify it with this option.
--with-xemacs[=/path/to/xemacs]
Configure for generation under XEmacs (Emacs is the default). Again, the name of the right XEmacs executable can be specified, complete with path if necessary.
--with-lispdir=/dir
This tells where to install Emacs Lisp files. Normally, this option is unnecessary, but may be used if you don't like the directory that configure is suggesting.
--with-packagedir=/dir
This tells where to install the XEmacs Package. Again, this option is normally unnecessary, but may be used if you don't like the directory that configure is suggesting, and you know that XEmacs regards the directory you specify as a package directory.

If you are installing preview-latex for a single user, and you have installed no XEmacs packages as that user before, then configure may try to install preview-latex in the systemwide package directory (that it cannot write to), causing installation to fail. In that case, a good value for this option is ~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages, as XEmacs looks there for per-user packages by default.

--with-tex-site=/dir
If AUCTeX is installed in a non-standard location, use this option to specify the location of its tex-site.el file.
--with-texmf-dir=/dir
--with-tex-dir=
/dir
Both of these options can be used to specify the location to install the preview TeX files. They are not necessary for most TeX installs, but may be used if you don't like the directory that configure is suggesting. Using --with-texmf-dir=/dir you can specify where the TeX TDS directory hierarchy resides, and the TeX files will be installed in /dir/tex/latex/preview. If you want to specify an exact directory for the preview TeX files, use --with-tex-dir=/dir. In this case, the files will be placed in /dir.
--with-doc-dir=/dir
This option may be used to specify where the TeX documentation goes. It is to be used when you are using --with-tex-dir=/dir, but is normally not necessary otherwise.
--disable-8bit-test
There can be problems if your LaTeX implementation is not 8-bit clean. This switch disables the 8-bit test, in case you know that your installation is clean and the test is simply failing. By specifying this switch, you signal your acceptance of having preview-latex fail on LaTeX files containing 8-bit characters. Check LaTeX international characters for more details.
--help
This is not an option specific to preview-latex. A number of standard options to configure exist, and we do not have the room to describe them here; a short description of each is available, using --help.