GNU LilyPond

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Invoking LilyPond

Usage:

        lilypond [OPTION... FILE...

To have LilyPond read from stdin, use a dash - for FILE.

Options

-e,--evaluate=code

Evaluates the Scheme code before parsing .ly files. Multiple -e options may be given. They will be evaluated sequentially.

-f,--format=format

Output format for sheet music. Choices are tex (for TeX output), ps (for PostScript), scm (for a Scheme dump), and as (for ASCII-art).

For processing both the TeX and the PostScript output, you must have appropriate environment variables set. For TeX, you have to set MFINPUTS and TEXINPUTS to point to the directory containing LilyPond metafont and .tex files. For processing PostScript output with Ghostscript you have to set GS_FONTPATH to point to the directory containing LilyPond PFA files.

Scripts to do this are included in buildscripts/out/lilypond-profile (for sh shells) and buildscripts/out/lilypond-login (for C-shells), and should normally be run as part of your login process.

-h,--help

Show a summary of usage.

--include, -I=directory

Add directory to the search path for input files.

-i,--init=file

Set init file to file (default: init.ly).

-m,--no-paper

Disable TeX output. If you have a \midi definition midi output will be generated.

-M,--dependencies

Output rules to be included in Makefile.

-o,--output=FILE

Set the default output file to FILE.

-s,--safe

Disallow untrusted \include directives, in-line Scheme evaluation, backslashes in TeX, code.

WARNING: the --safe option has not been reviewed for a long time; do not rely on it for automatic invocation (e.g. over the web). Volunteers are welcome to do a new audit.

-v,--version

Show version information

-V,--verbose

Be verbose: show full paths of all files read, and give timing information.

-w,--warranty

Show the warranty with which GNU LilyPond comes. (It comes with NO WARRANTY!)

When invoked with a filename that has no extension, LilyPond will try to add .ly as an extension first.

When LilyPond processes filename.ly it will produce filename.tex as output (or filename.ps for PostScript output). If filename.ly contains more than one \score block, then LilyPond will output the rest in numbered files, starting with filename-1.tex. Several files can be specified; they will each be processed independently. ¹

Environment variables

LILYINCLUDE

additional directories for finding lilypond data. The format is like the format of PATH.

LILYPONDPREFIX

This specifies a directory where locale messages and data files will be looked up by default. The directory should contain subdirectories called ly/, ps/, tex/, etc.

LANG

selects the language for the warning messages of LilyPond.

Footnotes

1. The status of GUILE is not reset across invocations, so be careful not to change any default settings from within Scheme .

Please send GNU LilyPond questions and comments to lilypond-user@gnu.org.

Please send comments on these web pages to lilypond@packages.debian.org

Copyright (c) 1997--2001 Han-Wen Nienhuys and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.