{: .no_toc }
{: .no_toc .text-delta }
Today's software market is a global one in which it is desirable to develop and maintain one application (single source/single binary) that supports a wide variety of languages. The International Components for Unicode (ICU) libraries provide robust and full-featured Unicode services on a wide variety of platforms to help this design goal. The ICU libraries provide support for:
ICU has a sister project ICU4J that extends the internationalization capabilities of Java to a level similar to ICU. The ICU C/C++ project is also called ICU4C when a distinction is necessary.
This document describes how to build and install ICU on your machine. For other information about ICU please see the following table of links. The ICU homepage also links to related information about writing internationalized software.
Here are some useful links regarding ICU and internationalization in general.
| ICU, ICU4C & ICU4J Homepage | https://icu.unicode.org/ | | ICU FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about ICU | https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/icu4c/faq | | ICU4J FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about ICU4J | https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/icu4j/faq | | ICU User's Guide | https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/ | | How To Use ICU | https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/icu/howtouseicu | | Download ICU Releases | https://icu.unicode.org/download | | ICU4C API Documentation Online | https://unicode-org.github.io/icu-docs/apidoc/released/icu4c/ | | Online ICU Demos | https://icu4c-demos.unicode.org/icu-bin/icudemos | | Contacts and Bug Reports/Feature Requests | https://icu.unicode.org/contacts |
Important: Please make sure you understand the Copyright and License Information.
See the ICU download page to find the subpage for the current release, including any other changes, bug fixes, known issues, changes to supported platforms and build environments, and migration issues for existing applications migrating from previous ICU releases.
The subpage for the current release will also include an API Change Report, both for ICU4C and ICU4J, for a complete list of APIs added, removed, or changed in this release.
The list of API changes since the previous ICU4C release is available here.
Changes in previous releases can also be found on the main ICU download page in its version-specific subpages.
There are two ways to download ICU releases:
icu-nnnn.zip
or icu-nnnn.tgz
, where nnnn
is the version number. The .zip file is used for Windows platforms, while the .tgz file is preferred on most other platforms. Please unzip this file.:point_right: Note: There may be additional commits on the
maint-*
branch for a particular version that are not included in the prepackaged download files.
In the descriptions below, <ICU>
is the full path name of the ICU4C directory (the top level directory from the distribution archives) in your file system. You can also view the ICU Architectural Design section of the User's Guide to see which libraries you need for your software product. You need at least the data ([lib]icudt
) and the common ([lib]icuuc
) libraries in order to use ICU.
The following files describe the code drop.
File | Description |
---|---|
LICENSE | Contains the text of the ICU license |
The following directories contain source code and data files.
<tr> <th scope="col">Directory</th> <th scope="col">Description</th> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>common</b>/</td> <td>The core Unicode and support functionality, such as resource bundles, character properties, locales, codepage conversion, normalization, Unicode properties, Locale, and UnicodeString.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>i18n</b>/</td> <td>Modules in i18n are generally the more data-driven, that is to say resource bundle driven, components. These deal with higher-level internationalization issues such as formatting, collation, text break analysis, and transliteration.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>layoutex</b>/</td> <td>Contains the ICU paragraph layout engine.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>io</b>/</td> <td>Contains the ICU I/O library.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>data</b>/</td> <td> <p>This directory contains the source data in text format, which is compiled into binary form during the ICU build process. It contains several subdirectories, in which the data files are grouped by function. Note that the build process must be run again after any changes are made to this directory.</p> <p>If some of the following directories are missing, it's probably because you got an official download. If you need the data source files for customization, then please download the complete ICU source code from <a href="https://icu.unicode.org/repository">the ICU repository</a>.</p> <ul> <li><b>in/</b> A directory that contains a pre-built data library for ICU. A standard source code package will contain this file without several of the following directories. This is to simplify the build process for the majority of users and to reduce platform porting issues.</li> <li><b>brkitr/</b> Data files for character, word, sentence, title casing and line boundary analysis.</li> <li><b>coll/</b> Data for collation tailorings.</li> <li><b>locales/</b> These .txt files contain ICU language and culture-specific localization data. Two special bundles are <b>root</b>, which is the fallback data and parent of other bundles, and <b>index</b>, which contains a list of installed bundles. Some of the locale data is split out into the type-specific directories curr, lang, region, unit, and zone, described below.</li> <li><b>curr/</b> Locale data for currency symbols and names (including plural forms).</li> <li><b>lang/</b> Locale data for names of languages, scripts, and locale key names and values.</li> <li><b>region/</b> Locale data for names of regions.</li> <li><b>unit/</b> Locale data for measurement unit patterns and names.</li> <li><b>zone/</b> Locale data for time zone names.</li> <li><b>mappings/</b> Here are the code page converter tables. These .ucm files contain mappings to and from Unicode. These are compiled into .cnv files. <b>convrtrs.txt</b> is the alias mapping table from various converter name formats to ICU internal format and vice versa. It produces cnvalias.icu. The makefiles <b>ucmfiles.mk, ucmcore.mk,</b> and <b>ucmebcdic.mk</b> contain the list of converters to be built.</li> <li><b>translit/</b> This directory contains transliterator rules as resource bundles, and the special bundle <b>translit_index</b> which lists the system transliterator aliases.</li> <li><b>unidata/</b> This directory contains the Unicode data files. Please see <a href= "http://www.unicode.org/">http://www.unicode.org/</a> for more information.</li> <li><b>misc/</b> The misc directory contains other data files which did not fit into the above categories, including time zone information, region-specific data, and other data derived from CLDR supplemental data.</li> <li><b>out/</b> This directory contains the assembled memory mapped files.</li> <li><b>out/build/</b> This directory contains intermediate (compiled) files, such as .cnv, .res, etc.</li> </ul> <p>If you are creating a special ICU build, you can set the ICU_DATA environment variable to the out/ or the out/build/ directories, but this is generally discouraged because most people set it incorrectly. You can view the <a href= "https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/icu_data">ICU Data Management</a> section of the ICU User's Guide for details.</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/test/<b>intltest</b>/</td> <td>A test suite including all C++ APIs. For information about running the test suite, see the build instructions specific to your platform later in this document.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/test/<b>cintltst</b>/</td> <td>A test suite written in C, including all C APIs. For information about running the test suite, see the build instructions specific to your platform later in this document.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/test/<b>iotest</b>/</td> <td>A test suite written in C and C++ to test the icuio library. For information about running the test suite, see the build instructions specific to your platform later in this document.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/test/<b>testdata</b>/</td> <td>Source text files for data, which are read by the tests. It contains the subdirectories <b>out/build/</b> which is used for intermediate files, and <b>out/</b> which contains <b>testdata.dat.</b></td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>tools</b>/</td> <td>Tools for generating the data files. Data files are generated by invoking <i><ICU></i>/source/data/build/makedata.bat on Win32 or <i><ICU></i>/source/make on UNIX.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>samples</b>/</td> <td>Various sample programs that use ICU</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>extra</b>/</td> <td>Non-supported API additions. Currently, it contains the 'uconv' tool to perform codepage conversion on files.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/<b>packaging</b>/</td> <td>This directory contain scripts and tools for packaging the final ICU build for various release platforms.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>config</b>/</td> <td>Contains helper makefiles for platform specific build commands. Used by 'configure'.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>allinone</b>/</td> <td>Contains top-level ICU workspace and project files, for instance to build all of ICU under one MSVC project.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/<b>include</b>/</td> <td>Contains the headers needed for developing software that uses ICU on Windows.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/<b>lib</b>/</td> <td>Contains the import libraries for linking ICU into your Windows application.</td> </tr> <tr> <td><i><ICU></i>/<b>bin</b>/</td> <td>Contains the libraries and executables for using ICU on Windows.</td> </tr> </table>
See the page on building ICU4C.
See the page on packaging ICU4C.
Some versions of ICU require calling the u_init()
function from uclean.h
to ensure that ICU is initialized properly. In those ICU versions, u_init()
must be called before ICU is used from multiple threads. There is no harm in calling u_init()
in a single-threaded application, on a single-CPU machine, or in other cases where u_init()
is not required.
In addition to ensuring thread safety, u_init()
also attempts to load at least one ICU data file. Assuming that all data files are packaged together (or are in the same folder in files mode), a failure code from u_init()
usually means that the data cannot be found. In this case, the data may not be installed properly, or the application may have failed to call udata_setCommonData()
or u_setDataDirectory()
which specify to ICU where it can find its data.
Since u_init()
will load only one or two data files, it cannot guarantee that all of the data that an application needs is available. It cannot check for all data files because the set of files is customizable, and some ICU services work without loading any data at all. An application should always check for error codes when opening ICU service objects (using ucnv_open()
, ucol_open()
, C++ constructors, etc.).
ICU 3.4 self-initializes properly for multi-threaded use. It achieves this without performance penalty by hardcoding the core Unicode properties data, at the cost of some flexibility. (For details see Jitterbug 4497.)
u_init()
can be used to check for data loading. It tries to load the converter alias table (cnvalias.icu
).
These ICU versions require a call to u_init()
before multi-threaded use. The services that are directly affected are those that don't have a service object and need to be fast: normalization and character properties.
u_init()
loads and initializes the data files for normalization and character properties (unorm.icu
and uprops.icu
) and can therefore also be used to check for data loading.
ICU 2.4 and earlier versions were not prepared for multithreaded use on multi-CPU platforms where the CPUs implement weak memory coherency. These CPUs include: Power4, Power5, Alpha, Itanium. u_init()
was not defined yet.
When ICU is built with aCC on HP-UX, the -AA
compiler flag is used. It is required in order to use the latest <iostream>
API in a thread safe manner. This compiler flag affects the version of the C++ library being used. Your applications will also need to be compiled with -AA
in order to use ICU.
In order to avoid synchronization and threading issues, developers are suggested to strictly follow the compiling and linking guidelines for multithreaded applications, specified in the following SUn Solaris document available from Oracle. Most notably, pay strict attention to the following statements from Sun:
To use libthread, specify
-lthread
before-lc
on the ld command line, or last on the cc command line.To use libpthread, specify
-lpthread
before-lc
on the ld command line, or last on the cc command line.
Failure to do this may cause spurious lock conflicts, recursive mutex failure, and deadlock.
Source: “Multithreaded Programming Guide, Compiling and Debugging”, Sun Microsystems, 2002 https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19683-01/806-6867/compile-74765/index.html
Note, a version of that chapter from a 2008 document update covering both Solaris 9 and Solaris 10 is available here: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-5137/compile-94179/index.html
If you are building on the Windows platform, it is important that you understand a few of the following build details.
As delivered, the International Components for Unicode build as several DLLs, which are placed in the <ICU>\bin64
directory. You must add this directory to the PATH environment variable in your system, or any executables you build will not be able to access International Components for Unicode libraries. Alternatively, you can copy the DLL files into a directory already in your PATH, but we do not recommend this. You can wind up with multiple copies of the DLL and wind up using the wrong one.
Use the System Icon in the Control Panel. Pick the “Advanced” tab. Select the “Environment Variables...” button. Select the variable PATH
in the lower box, and select the lower “Edit...” button. In the “Variable Value” box, append the string ;<ICU>\bin64
to the end of the path string. If there is nothing there, just type in <ICU>\bin64
. Click the Set button, then the OK button.
:point_right: Note: When packaging a Windows application for distribution and installation on user systems, copies of the ICU DLLs should be included with the application, and installed for exclusive use by the application. This is the only way to insure that your application is running with the same version of ICU, built with exactly the same options, that you developed and tested with. Refer to Microsoft's guidelines on the usage of DLLs, or search for the phrase “DLL hell” on msdn.microsoft.com.
If you are building on a UNIX platform, and if you are installing ICU in a non-standard location, you may need to add the location of your ICU libraries to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH
or LIBPATH
environment variable (or the equivalent runtime library path environment variable for your system). The ICU libraries may not link or load properly without doing this.
:point_right: Note: If you do not want to have to set this variable, you may instead use the
--enable-rpath
option at configuration time. This option will instruct the linker to always look for the libraries where they are installed. You will need to use the appropriate linker options when linking your own applications and libraries against ICU, too. Please refer to your system‘s linker manual for information about runtime paths. The use of rpath also means that when building a new version of ICU you should not have an older version installed in the same place as the new version’s installation directory, as the older libraries will used during the build, instead of the new ones, likely leading to an incorrectly build ICU. This is the proper behavior of rpath.
If you are using ICU's Makefiles to build ICU on a new platform, there are a few places where you will need to add or modify some files. If you need more help, you can always ask the icu-support mailing list. Once you have finished porting ICU to a new platform, it is recommended that you contribute your changes back to ICU via the icu-support mailing list. This will make it easier for everyone to benefit from your work.
For some people, it may not be necessary for completely build ICU. Most of the makefiles and build targets are for tools that are used for building ICU‘s data, and an application’s data (when an application uses ICU resource bundles for its data).
Data files can be built on a different platform when both platforms share the same endianness and the same charset family. This assertion does not include platform dependent DLLs/shared/static libraries. For details see the User Guide ICU Data chapter.
ICU 3.6 removes the requirement that ICU be completely built in the native operating environment. It adds the icupkg tool which can be run on any platform to turn binary ICU data files from any one of the three formats into any one of the other data formats. This allows a application to use ICU data built anywhere to be used for any other target platform.
WARNING! Building ICU without running the tests is not recommended. The tests verify that ICU is safe to use. It is recommended that you try to completely port and test ICU before using the libraries for your own application.
Try to follow the build steps from the UNIX build instructions. If the configure script fails, then you will need to modify some files. Here are the usual steps for porting to a new platform:
<ICU>/source/config/
. You can use mh-linux or a similar mh file as your base configuration.<ICU>/source/aclocal.m4
to recognize your platform's mh file.<ICU>/source/configure.in
to properly set your platform C Macro define.<ICU>/source/
without any options. The autoconf tool is standard on most Linux systems.<ICU>/source/runConfigureICU
to specify those options for your platform.The platform dependencies have been mostly isolated into the following files in the common library. This information can be useful if you are porting ICU to a new platform.
UBool
, int8_t
, int16_t
, int32_t
, int64_t
, uint64_t
etc.U_EXPORT
and U_IMPORT
for specifying dynamic library import and exportchar16_t
and wchar_t
types.uprv_isNaN
, uprv_isInfinite
, uprv_getNaN
and uprv_getInfinity
for handling special floating point values.uprv_tzset
, uprv_timezone
, uprv_tzname
and time
for getting platform specific time and time zone information.u_getDataDirectory
for getting the default data directory.uprv_getDefaultLocaleID
for getting the default locale setting.uprv_getDefaultCodepage
for getting the default codepage encoding.#ifdef
macros are highly discouraged outside of the scope of these files. When the source code gets updated in the future, these #ifdef
's can cause testing problems for your platform.Copyright © 2016 and later: Unicode, Inc. and others. License & terms of use: http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html Copyright © 1997-2016 International Business Machines Corporation and others. All Rights Reserved.