The source code for PHYLIP comes is in the C language. The programs are written in generic ANSI-compatible C code which can be compiled on most systems. There are conditionally-defined pieces of code to adapt the programs to Windows, MacOS or MacOS X systems, or to Linux or Unix systems that have X-windows.

The source code comes with a Makefile that enables it to be compiled easily on most compilers.

PHYLIP has been compiled successfully on Unix and Linux systems with the GCC C compiler, with proprietary compilers from Sun, HP, Compaq/Digital, SGI, and many other systems.

On most Linux or Unix systems all you need to do is type "make install".

Compiling the source code on PCs and on Macs is less easy. For the most part you do not have to think about doing it, as we distribute executables for Windows systems, for MacOS 8 or 9 systems, and for MacOS X systems. Once in a while you might want to recompile a program to add a feature of your own; the instructions for doing this are given in the documentation. However some leading PC and Mac compilers do not make this easy. It is possible (with some difficulty) to use a Makefile for Microsoft Visual C++, for Borland C, and for the Cygwin port of GCC to Windows, but it's harder for Codewarrior C++, which we use for the MacOS compiles. Codewarrior does not use a Makefile, but requires you to structure your compilation into "projects". Unfortunately although many different compilers are doing it that way now, the project structures differ between different compilers. Our distribution supplies Codewarrior projects for our programs, as well as other computation support and icon files for MSVC, Borland C, and Cygwin GCC.

If you have a PC or a Mac (or PowerMac), try our precompiled executables and avoid recompiling unless you have to.

The source code we distribute also has a compile.com file for VMS VAX systems. The present version should also be able to be compiled on DEC Alpha OpenVMS systems with a little hand-editing of the phylip.h and compile.com files. We have not checked this, since VMS and OpenVMS systems have been disappearing so rapidly.

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