Getting and Installing Xfig and Fig2dev

You need the fig2dev program in addition to xfig to be complete. Xfig saves figures in its own, proprietary .fig format. The fig2dev program translates the .fig files to various languages and formats such as PostScript, png, jpeg, pstricks, tikz, etc. Fig2dev allows you to print and export figures.

Most probably, xfig and fig2dev are available as pre-built (binary) packages using the package or software manager of your operating system. You will have to install both the xfig as well as the fig2dev or transfig package. Until about 2016, the fig2dev package was called transfig.

Binary packages of xfig and fig2dev (or transfig) are available for a number of Linux operating systems (debian, ubuntu, fedora, centos, suse, arch, etc.), some BSD's (netbsd, openbsd, freebsd), and for Darwin (fink, macports, brew).

For Windows, xfig can run under cygwin. Xfig and fig2dev are available as cygwin packages. Fig2dev can probably be compiled with VisualStudio.

Installing Other Software

In addition to xfig and fig2dev, it is very useful to have

ghostscript (the gs command) and one out of the
netpbm, imagemagick or graphicsmagick packages installed.

Xfig will call ghostscript to display postscript or pdf files embedded as a picture.
Fig2dev will need ghostscript to be able to export to pdf and to the bitmap formats (gif, jpeg, tiff, png, etc.). For some bitmap formats, fig2dev will try to call programs from either the netpbm, imagemagick or graphicsmagick packages to produce smaller output files.

Getting and Installing from Sources

You can get the sources for xfig and fig2dev from https://sourceforge.net/projects/mcj. Files such as xfig+fig2dev-3.2.Xx.tar.xz contain the sources for both programs, while xfig-3.2.Xx.tar.xz and fig2dev-3.2.Xx contain the sources for xfig and fig2dev, respectively.

Uncompress and untar the archives (tar xaf *.tar.xz or tar xJf *.tar.xz), navigate into the base directory, e.g.,
cd fig2dev-3.2.??
configure, build and install the program:
./configure
make
make install

See the INSTALL files of xfig and fig2dev for further instructions. Especially xfig needs some further options to ./configure.

To build xfig, the minimum requirements are the runtime libraries and the header files for libx11, libxt, libxaw (or libxaw3d), libxi, and libxpm. For fig2dev, the zlib (zlib1g) runtime libraries and development (header) files are needed. Optionally, the png, jpeg and tiff libraries are recommended for reading and displaying image files in xfig. Fig2dev will need the png library to export .fig files containing a png image to postscript, pdf or any image format.

Installing Ghostscript's Type 1 fonts under X

You can use Ghostscript's high quality Type 1 fonts on your X server (and therefore in xfig). Copy the necessary files from Ghostscript's fonts directory to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/ (or wherever your X server Type 1 fonts are).

$ cp /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/*l.pfb /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1

Append the file /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/fonts.scale to Type1/fonts.scale. The first line in the latter file contains is the number of fonts listed in that file. Change that number to include the additional fonts.

Now run mkfontdir(1) to update the font database:

$ mkfontdir

If your operating system has the chkfontpath command, alternative is to add the Ghostscript font directory to the X server font path:

chkfontpath -a /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/fonts/

In either case, if your X-server is running already you have to tell it to reread the font databases with xset(1):

$ xset fp rehash

Related Software

GhostScript: xfig will invoke GhostScript (the gs command) when displaying an imported PostScript image or when exporting to pdf or any bitmap format.
AutoTrace: Converts bitmap to vector graphics - has a Fig file output driver. Available from http://autotrace.sourceforge.net. Written by Martin Weber.
chemtool: A chemical structure editor for X11 available from http://ruby.chemie.uni-freiburg.de/~martin/chemtool/chemtool.html that writes Fig output (and relies on fig2dev for anything more fancy than xbm).
figbuild: figbuild reads xfig files (Version 3.x, tested with 3.1, 3.2) plus its own config file for heights, and generates a Radiance input file. Written by Peter Apian-Bennewitz, then at Fraunhofer ISE, Germany. See http://www.pab-opto.de/progs/figbuild
GIMP: A comprehensive image manipulation program, GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is freely available from http://www.gimp.org/.
gnuplot: gnuplot is a plotting package which can output in Fig and other formats. The official distribution site is http://www.gnuplot.info/.
hp2xx: hp2xx can convert HP-GL files into other formats such as PostScript, LaTeX or Fig. It is available from https://www.gnu.org/software/hp2xx.
Msphinx: A friendly package to handle satellite images. It can directly link to Xfig. Find it at: https://www-loa.univ-lille1.fr/informatique/logiciels/Msphinx.html.
netpbm: fig2dev will invoke the appropriate command from the netpbm package when exporting figures to bitmap formats. netpbm is available from https://sourceforge.net/projects/netpbm/, see also http://netpbm.sourceforge.net.
plotutils (GNU): includes an application for XY plotting (graph), a plot filter (plot), a Tektronix translator (tek2plot), a program for displaying font character maps (plotfont), and a library for drawing 2-D vector graphics (libplot), and a translator to Fig format (plot2fig). By Robert S. Maier <rsm@math.arizona.edu>. See https://www.gnu.org/software/plotutils.
pstoedit: pstoedit can convert PostScript files into Fig format. It is available from https://pstoedit.sourceforge.io, see also http://pstoedit.net.
xfigbar and xfigpie: Two C programs to produce bar and pie charts as Fig files. Written by John Conover <john@johncon.johncon.com>, these programs are available at: http://www.johncon.com/john/archive/xfigutilities.tar.gz
xpaint: xpaint is a painting program which runs under X11. It is available from https://sourceforge.net/projects/sf-xpaint/files/sf-xpaint, see http://sf-xpaint.sourceforge.net.
xv: xv can be used to display images in various formats and allows some editing of those images (cropping, color editing scaling/rotating etc). By default, xfig will invoke xv when the Edit Image button is pressed in the edit PICTURE object panel. xv is shareware and is available from http://www.trilon.com/xv.

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