compiling_HFS T3

This is a receipt for setting up HFST3, with the backends we need. See the HFST3 README file for further details, and how to turn on or off specific backens if needed or wanted.

Up-to-date as of 2013-04-11

Presently, HFST3 supports three different backends:

• OpenFST - weighted transducers (default)
• Foma - xfst-compatible lexc and regex compiler, xfst scripts (optional)
• SFST - unweighted transducers, fast substitute (optional)

As of HFST 3.4, the backends are included in the source distributions, and in the svn repository. There is thus no need to install them separately, as used to be the case. This has greatly simplified the installation process for HFST3, which is now pretty straightforward.

HFST3 abstracts over the different backends, and will make it easy to add support for new backends in the future, to support even more FST source code and transducer conversion options. The abstraction is becoming quite clean, but @necessitates that the wanted backends are installed separately. This also makes it easier to handle backends with incompatible licenses, as each backend is compiled and installed as separate entities.

The bottom line: use the latest version, and follow the receipts below, and you should be fine.

Please note that HFST3 requires rather new versions of flex and bison. The versions shipping with the Snow Leopard (MacOS X 10.6) or later XCode should be ok. For older MacOS versions, you probably will have to install updated versions of these tools using MacPorts. See the HFST3 README file for further details.

We assume installation from svn here:

svn co http://svn.code.sf.net/p/hfst/code/trunk/hfst3
cd hfst3/
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-proc --enable-lexc # This is the minimum we need

As of HFST 3.4.4, the foma and sfst backends are enabled by default, thus there is no need to explicitly enable them.

For MacOS X

For some reason .yy files must be built explicitly on MacOS X:

for yy_file in `find . -name '*.yy'`; do pushd `dirname $yy_file`; make `basename $yy_file .yy`.cc; cp -vf `basename $yy_file .yy`.hh `basename $yy_file .yy`.h; popd; done

You will get this error message at the end of the output:

~/lingsvn/hfst3/tools/src/parsers ~/lingsvn/hfst3
make: *** No rule to make target `xfst-parser.cc'.  Stop.
cp: xfst-parser.hh: No such file or directory

Just ignore it, it won't stop HFST3 from building.

make
sudo make install

To check what other options there are for enabling other backends and functions, do ./configure --help.

Building on Victorio

Victorio lacks a few crucial tools to build from svn. One thus have to first build a distro on another machine, and move it to victorio, or use the prebuilt tarball from the hfst site. To build a tarball on your local machine, do:

cd hfst3/
make dist

Copy the tarball to victorio. When the tarball is on victorio, proceed as follows:

tar -xzf hfst-3.2.0.tar.gz
cd hfst-3.2.0/
./configure --with-foma --enable-proc --enable-lexc # as above
make
sudo make install