Wt Installation instructions

This page lists the instructions for building and installing Wt 2.99.0. It is organized in 3 sections:

Requirements
Building and installing the library
Trying the examples (or your own Wt application)

Instructions for installing Wt on a Win32 platform are provided in a seperate file (INSTALL.win32.html).

Requirements

The library provides two ways for deploying applications: either using the FastCGI protocol, in conjunction with a webserver (like apache), or using a built-in web server (wthttpd). You only need one of these, but you can have both of them.

The built-in web server is more convenient during development and is easier to setup. It is also the only option available for Win32.

The FastCGI based solution provides more flexibility for deployment of the application. The built-in web server runs all sessions in a single process, while the FastCGI based solution allows different deployment schemes including dedicated processes per sessions.

Each of these two choices correspond to a library. Below it is outlined how to configure the build process of Wt to include either or both options, which result in building the libraries libwthttp and libfcgi.

Thus, to build a Wt library with built-in web server you need to link against libwt and libwthttp. To build a Wt library which acts as a FastCGI process, you need to link against libwt and libfcgi.

1 Unix-like

Compiler: gcc-3.3.4 or higher, or gcc-4.1.x or higher, or other Ansi C++ compiler that can deal with boost-like C++ code.
CMake cross-platform build system (www.cmake.org): cmake-2.4.
C++ boost library (version 1.35 or higher), preferably with thread support enabled. You can verify you have a thread-enabled boost installation by locating the libboost_thread library. Thread support is not essential: Wt functionality is not affected except for exotic things like server push. Most importantly, even without thread support Wt can handle multiple concurrent sessions.

1a Using FastCGI

When using FastCGI, Wt requires a webserver (like apache) which supports FastCGI protocol.

FCGI library, including C++ bindings (libfcgi++)
Fastcgi or mod_fcgi plugin for apache
Apache (1 or 2)
should work for other web servers as well, but the default configuration assumes apache when installing the library or deploying examples

1b Using wthttpd

When using the built-in webserver, two more libraries are necessary to enable optional features (you can also build without them).

(optionally) libz, for compression over HTTP.
(optionally) openssl, for supporting HTTPS.

2 Win32

Wt for Windows has its own installation instructions.

Microsoft Visual Studio C++.
CMake cross-platform build system (www.cmake.org): cmake-2.4.

3 Additional and optional requirements for some of the examples

libgd2 (style, wt-homepage, mandelbrot)
libmysql++-2.x (hangman)

Building and installing the Wt library

1. Create a build directory

The easiest way to build the library is in a seperate build directory, for example within the top-level of the Wt package:

    $ cd wt-x.xx
    $ mkdir build
    $ cd build

2. Configure the library

    $ cmake ../

The latter command will try to locate the necessary libraries. If everything is OK, then this should end with something like:

  -- Generating done
  -- Build files have been written to: /home/kdforc0/project/wt/build

To build a multi-threaded version of Wt, which uses multiple threads for handling concurrent requests, you need a thread-enabled boost library (with -mt versions of the boost libraries). Otherwise, the cmake will report:

  ...
  -- Looking for pthread_create in pthread - found
  ** Disabling multi threading.
  ...

Most linux distributions do not provide thread enabled boost libraries by default. In gentoo, you need the -threads or -threadsonly USE flag when emerging boost.

If CMake fails, because it cannot resolve all dependencies, then you may help CMake by setting some variables to help CMake locate the libraries. This may be done on the command-line using -Dvar=value or using the interactive program:

    $ ccmake .

Variables that affect the location of dependencies are:

BOOST_COMPILER: The boost compiler signature. For a library libboost_regex-gcc41-mt-1_37.so, this is 'gcc41'
BOOST_VERSION: The boost compiler signature. For a library libboost_regex-gcc41-mt-1_37.so, this is '1_37'
BOOST_DIR: The boost installation directory. This is the directory where lib/ and include/ are located for your boost installation.

Other variables specify several build and configuration aspects of Wt, of which the most relevant ones are:

CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX: Installation prefix for the library and include files)
CONFIGDIR: Path for configuration files (default is /etc/wt/)
CONNECTOR_FCGI: Build the FastCGI connector (libwtfcgi) ?
CONNECTOR_HTTP: Build the stand-alone httpd connector (libwthttp) ?
EXAMPLES_CONNECTOR: Which connector library to use for the examples? (wthttp or wtfcgi)
MULTI_THREADED: Build a multi-threaded wthttpd? While on by default, and recommended, you may want to disable this for example if you suspect threading problems. Note that recursive event loops (most notably when using Dialog::exec()) are not possible without thread support.

The following variables apply to the FastCGI connector:

RUNDIR: Default location for Wt runtime session management (can be overridden in the Configuration file)
WEBUSER: Webserver username: used to assign permissions to RUNDIR
WEBGROUP: Webserver groupname: used to assign permissions to RUNDIR
DEPLOYROOT: Path to deploy examples into -- if you want that.

The following variables apply to the wthttpd connector:

WTHTTP_CONFIGURATION: Location of the wthttpd configuration file (default is /etc/wt/wthttpd)
HTTP_WITH_SSL: Compile with support for SSL, for secure HTTP (HTTPS). This requires an OpenSSL library.
HTTP_WITH_ZLIB: Compile with support for compression over HTTP. This requires the libz library.

To change any entry, use [Enter]. To save and quit, do [c] followed by [g].

3. Build the library

    $ make

4. Install the library (as user with sufficient permissions):

    $ make install

5. Get your LD_LIBRARY_PATH ok, if needed (mostly for FastCGI).

If you did not install Wt in a directory (CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX) included in the default linker dynamic library search path, then the web server will not be able to start Wt programs (such as the examples).

Fix it by (as user with sufficient permissions):

    $ ln -s /your/path/to/lib/libwt.so /usr/lib
    $ ln -s /your/path/to/lib/libwtfcgi.so /usr/lib

Trying the examples (or your own Wt application)

Deploying an application is different when using FastCGI or the built-in web server (wthttpd).

The examples that come with the library use the connector specified by the build option EXAMPLES_CONNECTOR (see supra).

A. Using FastCGI and apache

1. Build the examples

    $ make -C examples

2. Deploy the example X

    $ cd examples/X
    $ ./deploy.sh

3. Configure Apache

Treat the example as a mod_fastcgi application, by adding a line to 20_mod_fastcgi.conf in your Apache configuration modules.d/ directory, e.g.:

    FastCgiServer /var/www/localhost/htdocs/wt-examples/composer/composer.wt

4. Restart apache

B. Using wthttpd

1. Build the examples

    $ make -C examples

2. Run the example X

Some examples use additional files, such as message resource bundles, which are not indicated with absolute path names. Therefore the working directory should be the source directory for the example (unless you use the ./deploy.sh script to deploy everything in a permenant directory). A similar argument goes for icons and the setting of the --docroot variable.

    $ cd ../examples/X # source directory for example X
    $ ln -s ../../resources . # include standard Wt resource files
    $ ../../build/examples/X/X.wt --docroot . --http-address 0.0.0.0 --http-port 8080

This will start a httpd server listening on all local interfaces, on port 8080, and you may browse the example at http://127.0.0.1:8080/

To make sure the web server has all auxiliary files (like images, CSS style sheets, and perhaps other things) in place for the web application, you could use the ./deploy.sh script to copy everything into a directory (see the cmake DEPLOYROOT variable)

These are all the command-line options that are available:

General options:
  -h [ --help ]                produce help message
  -t [ --threads ] arg (=10)   number of threads
  --servername arg (=vierwerf) servername (IP address or DNS name)
  --docroot arg                document root for static files
  --errroot arg                root for error pages
  --accesslog arg              access log file (defaults to stdout)
  --no-compression             do not compress dynamic text/html and text/plain
                               responses
  --deploy-path arg (=/)       location for deployment
  --session-id-prefix arg      prefix for session-id's (overrides wt_config.xml
                               setting)
  -p [ --pid-file ] arg        path to pid file (optional)
  -c [ --config ] arg          location of wt_config.xml. If unspecified,
                               WT_CONFIG_XML is searched in the environment, if
                               it does not exist then the compiled-in default
                               (/etc/wt/wt_config.xml) is tried. If the default
                               does not exist, we revert to default values for
                               all parameters.

HTTP server options:
  --http-address arg    IPv4 (e.g. 0.0.0.0) or IPv6 Address (e.g. 0::0)
  --http-port arg (=80) HTTP port (e.g. 80)

HTTPS server options:
  --https-address arg     IPv4 (e.g. 0.0.0.0) or IPv6 Address (e.g. 0::0)
  --https-port arg (=443) HTTPS port (e.g. 443)
  --ssl-certificate arg   SSL server certificate chain file
                          e.g. "/etc/ssl/certs/vsign1.pem"
  --ssl-private-key arg   SSL server private key file
                          e.g. "/etc/ssl/private/company.pem"
  --ssl-tmp-dh arg        File for temporary Diffie-Hellman parameters
                          e.g. "/etc/ssl/dh512.pem"