DOWNLOAD XSCHEM

You should download the xschem sources from one of these repositories:

From repo.hu with subversion:

  svn checkout svn://repo.hu/xschem/trunk xschem-src

From sourceforge.net with subversion:

  svn checkout https://svn.code.sf.net/p/xschem/code/ xschem-src

From github.com with git:

  git clone https://github.com/StefanSchippers/xschem.git xschem-src

Attention

If you have a binary xschem package installed on the system you should remove it. Packaged xschem versions are too old and they conflict with the one you are building from source. To remove: (this command is for Debian/Ubuntu, use similar commands for other distributions)
sudo apt-get purge xschem

INSTALL XSCHEM

in order to install the program run the following command:

  user:~$ cd xschem-src; ./configure

This will make all the necessary checks for required libraries and system tools.

for Debian and Ubuntu systems these are the packages you should check to be installed. Tck/Tk versions may vary on different systems, 8.4, 8.5, 8.6 versions are all good.

  LIBRARIES                              DEVELOPMENT FILES
-----------------------------------------------------------
  libx11-6                               libx11-dev
  libxrender1                            libxrender-dev
  libxcb1                                libx11-xcb-dev        
  libcairo2                              libcairo2-dev
  tcl8.6                                 tcl8.6-dev
  tk8.6                                  tk8.6-dev
  flex                                   bison
  libxpm4                                libxpm-dev
  libjpeg62-turbo or libjpeg             libjpeg-dev

# terminal program and editor used by default by xschem:
# alternative programs can be specified in xschemrc by 
# setting tcl variables 'terminal' and 'editor', respectively.
  xterm vim-gtk3
# tools that should be available on all systems by default:
  gawk or mawk
# Suggested (not mandatory for using xschem) packages:
  tcl-tclreadline

If configure ends with no errors we are ready to compile:

  user:~$ make

If we want to install xschem and its required files (execute as root if you plan to do a system-wide installation, for example in /usr/local):

  user:~$ sudo make install

This will install all the runtime needed files into the locations previously configured (can be found in Makefile.conf). To change the default installation prefix (/usr/local), please replace the configure step shown above with:

   ./configure --prefix=new/prefix/path

For testing purposes xschem can be run and invoked from the build directory xschem-<version>/src/ without installation.

  user:~$ cd xschem-2.7.0/src && ./xschem

When xschem is running, type puts $XSCHEM_LIBRARY_PATH in the xschem tcl prompt to know the library search path.
Type puts $XSCHEM_SHAREDIR to see the installation path.

Sample user design libraries are provided and installed systemwide under ${XSCHEM_SHAREDIR/xschem_library/. The XSCHEM_START_WINDOW specifies a schematic to preload at startup, to avoid absolute paths use a path that is relative to one of the XSCHEM_LIBRARY_PATH directories. XSCHEM will figure out the actual location. You may comment the definition if you don't want any schematic on startup.

If you need to override system settings, create a ~/.xschem/xschemrc. The easiest way is to copy the system installed version from ${prefix}/share/xschem/xschemrc and then make the necessary changes.

  user:$ mkdir ~/.xschem
  user:$ cp <install root>/share/xschem/xschemrc ~/.xschem/xschemrc

When xschem is run the first time it will do the above operations, create a ${HOME}/.xschem/ directory and place a xschemrc into it.

- Build xschem with a custom tcl-tk installation

If you need to build xschem against a tcl-tk installation located in a non-standard place you must provide additional options to the .configure script.
Suppose there is a tcl-tk version 8.4 installation in /home/schippes/x/tcltk then the following commands must be given before runninkg make and make install:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/schippes/x/tcltk/lib

./configure \
--prefix=/home/schippes \
/arg/tcl-version=8.4 \
/arg/tk-version=8.4 \
--prefix/libs/script/tcl=/home/schippes/x/tcltk \
--prefix/libs/script/tk=/home/schippes/x/tcltk \
--debug

This is the command I run to build and test xschem with tcl-tk 8.4 which was released 20 years ago.

-Technical information - Detailed XSCHEM startup sequence

Information here under is not meant to be executed by the user

Source system-wide xschemrc if existing: XSCHEM_SHAREDIR/xschemrc. This file is by default all commented so it does nothing. See below how XSCHEM_SHAREDIR path is generated.
If --rcfile=<rcfile> is given then source the specified rcfile. Do not load any other rcfile.
If ../src/xchem.tcl with respect to current dir is existing and ../xschem_library is also existing then we are starting from a build directory, set XSCHEM_SHAREDIR to <current dir> and also set XSCHEM_LIBRARY_PATH to ../xschem_library/devices.
Else use compile-time (generated from configure script) provided XSCHEM_SHAREDIR. (default is /usr/local/share/xschem).
If in current dir there is a xschemrc file source it.
Else if there is a USER_CONF_DIR/xschemrc file source it. XSCHEM_SHAREDIR and USER_CONF_DIR are preprocessor macros passed at compile time by the configure script. The first one will be overridden only if executing from a build directory, see item 3.
If XSCHEM_SHAREDIR not defined --> error and quit.
Start loading user provided schematic file or start with empty window (or filename specified in XSCHEM_START_WINDOW tcl variable).