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1 README.MinGW
2 ============
4 Contributed by Keith Marshall (keith.d.marshall@ntlworld.com)
7 INTRODUCTION
8 ------------
10 This file provides recommendations for building a Win32 implementation of
11 GNU Groff, using the MinGW port of GCC for Microsoft (TM) Windows-32
12 platforms. It is intended to supplement the standard installation
13 instructions (see file INSTALL); it does not replace them.
15 You require both the MinGW implementation of GCC and its supporting MSYS
16 toolkit, which provides a Win-32 implementation of the GNU bash shell, and a
17 few other essential utilities; these may be obtained from
19 http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw
21 by following the appropriate download links, where they are available as
22 self-extracting executable installation packages. If installing both from
23 scratch, it is recommended that MinGW is installed first, as the MSYS
24 installer can then automatically set up the proper environment for running
25 MinGW.
27 Additionally, if you wish to compile groff with support for its HTML output
28 capability, some additional tools are required as decribed in the section
29 PREREQUISITES FOR HTML OUTPUT later in this file.
32 BUILDING GROFF WITH MINGW
33 -------------------------
35 Assuming that you have obtained the appropriate groff distribution, and that
36 you are already running an MSYS shell, then the configuration, compilation,
37 and installation of groff, using MinGW, is performed in much the same way as
38 it is described in the INSTALL file, which is provided with the groff
39 distribution. The installation steps are summarised below:
41 1. Change working directory to any suitable location where you may unpack
42 the groff distribution; you must be authorized for write access.
43 Approximately 30MB of free disk space are needed.
45 2. Unpack the groff distribution:
47 tar xzf <download-path>/groff-<version>.tar.gz
49 This creates a new sub-directory, groff-<version>, containing an image of
50 the groff source tree. You should now change directory, to make this
51 ./groff-<version> your working directory.
53 3. If you are intending to build groff with support for HTML output, then
54 you must now ensure that the prerequisites described in the later section
55 PREREQUISITES FOR HTML OUTPUT are satisfied, before proceeding to build
56 groff; in particular, please ensure that all required support programs
57 are installed in the current PATH.
59 4. You are now ready to configure, build, and install groff. This is
60 accomplished using the conventional procedure, as described in the file
61 INSTALL, i.e.
63 ./configure --prefix=<win32-install-path> ...
64 make
65 make install
67 Please observe the syntax for the configure command, indicated above; the
68 default value for --prefix is not suitable for use with MinGW, so the
69 --prefix=<win32-install-path> option must be specified, where
70 <win32-install-path> is the chosen MS-Windows directory in which the
71 groff application files are to be installed (see the later section
72 entitled CHOOSING AN INSTALLATION PATH). Any other desired configuration
73 options may also be specified, as described in the standard groff
74 installation instructions.
76 5. After completing the above, groff should be successfully installed; the
77 build directory is no longer required; it may be simply deleted in its
78 entirety. Alternatively, you may choose to keep it, but to remove all
79 files which can be reproduced later, by repeating the configure, make and
80 make install steps; this is readily accomplished by the command
82 make distclean
85 This completes the installation of groff; please read the final sections of
86 this file, GROFF RUNTIME ENVIRONMENT and CAVEATS AND BUGS, for advice on
87 setting up the runtime environment, and avoiding known runtime problems,
88 before running groff.
91 CHOOSING AN INSTALLATION PATH
92 -----------------------------
94 It may be noted that the above instructions indicate that the ./configure
95 command must be invoked with an argument specifying a preference for
96 --prefix=<win32-install-path>, whereas the standard groff installation
97 instructions indicate that this may be omitted, in which case it defaults to
98 --prefix=/usr/local.
100 In the case of building with MinGW, the default behaviour of configure is
101 not appropriate for the following reasons.
103 o The MSYS environment creates a virtual UNIX-like file system, with its
104 root mapped to the actual MS-Windows directory where MSYS itself is
105 installed; /usr is also mapped to this MSYS installation directory.
107 o All of the MSYS tools, and the MinGW implementation of GCC, refer to files
108 via this virtual file system representation; thus, if the
109 --prefix=<win32-install-path> is not specified when groff is configured,
110 `make install' causes groff to be installed in <MSYS-install-path>/local.
112 o groff needs to know its own installation path, so that it can locate its
113 own installed components. This information is compiled in, using the
114 exact form specified with the --prefix=<win32-install-path> option to
115 configure.
117 o Knowledge of the MSYS virtual file system is not imparted to groff; it
118 expects the compiled-in path to its components to be a fully qualified
119 MS-Windows path name (although UNIX-style slashes are permitted, and
120 preferred to the MS-Windows style backslashes, to demarcate the directory
121 hierarchy). Thus, when configuring groff, if
122 --prefix=<win32-install-path> is not correctly specified, then the
123 installed groff application looks for its components in /usr/local, and
124 most likely doesn't find them, because they are actually installed in
125 <MSYS-install-path>/local.
127 It is actually convenient, but by no means a requirement, to have groff
128 installed in the /usr/local directory of the MSYS virtual file system; this
129 makes it easy to invoke groff from the MSYS shell, since the virtual
130 /usr/local/bin is normally added automatically to the PATH (the default
131 PATH, as set in MSYS's /etc/profile), when MSYS is started.
133 In order to install groff into MSYS's /usr/local directory, it is necessary
134 to specify the fully qualified absolute MS-Windows path to this directory,
135 when configuring groff, i.e.
137 ./configure --prefix=<MSYS-install-path>/local ...
139 For example, on a system where MSYS is installed in the MS-Windows directory
140 D:\MSYS\1.0, the MSYS virtual path /usr/local resolves to the absolute
141 MS-Windows native path D:\MSYS\1.0\local (the /usr component of the MSYS
142 virtual path does not appear in the resolved absolute native path name since
143 MSYS maps this directly to the root of the MSYS virtual file system). Thus,
144 the --prefix option should be specified to configure as
146 ./configure --prefix=D:/MSYS/1.0/local ...
148 Note that the backslash characters, which appear in the native MS-Windows
149 form of the path name, are replaced by UNIX-style slashes in the argument to
150 configure; this is the preferred syntax.
152 Also note that the MS-Windows device designator (D: in this instance) is
153 prepended to the specified path, in the normal MS-Windows format, and that,
154 since upper and lower case distinctions are ignored in MS-Windows path
155 names, any combination of upper and lower case is acceptable.
158 PREREQUISITES FOR HTML OUTPUT
159 -----------------------------
161 If you intend to use groff for production of HTML output, then there are a
162 few dependencies which must be satisfied. Ideally, these should be resolved
163 before attempting to configure and build groff, since the configuration
164 script does check them.
166 In order to produce HTML output, you first require a working implementation
167 of Ghostscript; either the AFPL Ghostscript or the GNU Ghostscript
168 implementation for MS-Windows should be suitable, depending on your
169 licensing preference. It is highly recommended to use version 8.11 or
170 higher due to bugs in older versions. These may be obtained, in the form of
171 self-installing binary packages, by following the download links for the
172 chosen licensing option, from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript.
174 Please note that these packages install the Ghostscript interpreter required
175 by groff in the ./bin subdirectory of the Ghostscript installation
176 directory, with the name gswin32c.exe. However, groff expects this
177 interpreter to be located in the system PATH, with the name gs.exe. Thus,
178 to ensure that groff can correctly locate the Ghostscript interpreter, it is
179 recommended that the file gswin32c.exe should be copied from the Ghostscript
180 installation directory to the MSYS /usr/local/bin directory, where it should
181 be renamed to gs.exe.
183 In addition to a working Ghostscript interpreter, you also require several
184 image manipulation utilities, all of which may be scavenged from various
185 packages available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32, and which
186 should be installed in the MSYS /usr/local/bin directory, or any other
187 suitable directory which is specified in the PATH. These additional
188 prerequisites are
190 1. from the netpbm-<version>-bin.zip package:
192 netpbm.dll
193 pnmcrop.exe
194 pnmcut.exe
195 pnmtopng.exe
196 pnmtops.exe
198 2. from the libpng-<version>-bin.zip package:
200 libpng.dll
202 3. from the zlib-<version>-bin.zip package:
204 zlib-1.dll, which must be renamed to zlib.dll
206 4. from the psutils-<version>-bin.zip package:
208 psselect.exe
210 Note that it is not necessary to install the above four packages in their
211 entirety; of course, you may do so if you wish.
214 GROFF RUNTIME ENVIRONMENT
215 -------------------------
217 The runtime environment, provided to groff by MSYS, is essentially the same
218 as would be provided under a UNIX or GNU/Linux operating system; thus, any
219 environment variables which may be used to customize the groff runtime
220 environment have similar effects under MSYS, as they would in UNIX or
221 GNU/Linux, with the exception that any variable specifying a path should
222 adopt the same syntax as a native MS-Windows PATH specification.
224 There is, however, one known problem which is associated with the
225 implementation of the MS-Windows file system, and the manner in which the
226 Microsoft runtime library (which is used by the MinGW implementation of GCC)
227 generates names for temporary files. This known problem arises when groff
228 is invoked with a current working directory which refers to a network share,
229 for which the user does not have write access in the root directory, and
230 there is no environment variable set to define a writeable location for
231 creating temporary files. When these conditions arise, groff fails with a
232 `permission denied' error, as soon as it tries to create any temporary file.
234 To specify the location for creating temporary files, the standard UNIX or
235 GNU/Linux implementation of groff provides the GROFF_TMPDIR or TMPDIR
236 environment variables, whereas MS-Windows applications generally use TMP or
237 TEMP; furthermore, the MS-Windows implementations of Ghostscript apparently
238 support the use of only TEMP or TMPDIR.
240 To avoid problems with creation of temporary files, it is recommended that
241 you ensure that both TMP and TEMP are defined, with identical values, to
242 point to a suitable location for creating temporary files; many MS-Windows
243 boxes have them set already, and groff has been adapted to honour them, when
244 built in accordance with the preceding instructions, using MinGW.
247 CAVEATS AND BUGS
248 ----------------
250 There are two known issues, observed when running groff in the MinGW/MSYS
251 environment, which would not affect groff in its native UNIX environment:
253 o Running groff with the working directory set to a subdirectory of a
254 network share, where the user does not have write permission in the root
255 directory of the share, causes groff to fail with a `permission denied'
256 exception, if the TMP environment variable is not appropriately defined;
257 it may also be necessary to define the TEMP environment variable, to avoid
258 a similar failure mode, when using the -Thtml output mode of groff. This
259 problem is more fully discussed in the preceding section, GROFF RUNTIME
260 ENVIRONMENT.
262 o When running groff (or nroff) to process standard input, where the
263 standard input stream is obtained directly from the RXVT console provided
264 with MSYS, groff cannot detect the end-of-file condition for the standard
265 input stream, and hangs. This appears to be caused by a fault in the MSYS
266 implementation of RXVT; it may be worked around by either starting MSYS
267 without RXVT (see the comments in the MSYS.BAT startup script); in this
268 case standard input is terminated by typing <Ctrl-Z> followed by <RETURN>,
269 on a new input line. Alternatively, if you prefer to use MSYS with RXVT,
270 you can enter the interactive groff command in the form
272 cat | groff ...
274 in which case <Ctrl-D> terminates the standard input stream, in just the
275 same way it does on a UNIX system; the cat executable provided with MSYS
276 does seem to trap the end-of-file condition, and properly signals groff
277 that the input stream has terminated.