2 # INSTALL -- installation instructions
8 Please read all of the following instructions before you begin
11 You should check the MACHINES file to see if there are any specific
12 build instructions for your operating system. To build nmh, you will
13 need an ANSI C compiler such as gcc.
15 0) If you have obtained nmh by checking it out of CVS, you will
16 need to run the GNU autotools to regenerate some files.
17 (If your directory already contains a file 'config.h.in'
18 then this has already been done and you do not need to do it.)
19 You can regenerate the files by running the command
23 (Note that if you're doing nmh development, you should look at
24 docs/README.developers, since there is other developer-friendly
25 advice there as well.)
27 1) From the top-level source directory, run the command
31 This will check the configuration of your OS, and create the
32 include file config.h, as well as the various Makefiles.
34 The configure script accepts various options. The options of
35 most interest are listed in a section below. To see the list
36 of all available options, you can run
40 2) Look through the user configuration section at the beginning
41 of the generated include file `config.h'. You may
42 want to customize some #defines for your environment.
48 Note that if you have [n]mh files in your install directories with
49 the same names as the files being installed, the old ones will get
50 overwritten without any warning. The only directory that isn't
51 true for is the `etc' directory -- in that directory, the previous
52 copy of each <file> will be backed up as <file>.prev if it differs
53 from the newly-installed copy. Watch for any diff output while
54 make is processing that directory to see if you need to merge
55 changes from *.prev files into the new versions.
57 5) Edit the file `mts.conf' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory)
58 and make any necessary changes for the mail transport interface
61 The default `mts.conf' file assumes you retrieve new mail from
62 a local (or NFS mounted) maildrop, and send outgoing mail by
63 injecting the message to a mail transfer agent (such as sendmail)
66 Check the `mh-tailor' man page for a list of all the available options
67 for this file ("masquerade" may be of particular interest).
69 6) Edit the file `mhn.defaults' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory).
70 This file contains the default profile entries for the nmh command
71 `mhn' and is created by the script `mhn.defaults.sh'. This script
72 will search a generic path (essentially your $PATH) for programs to
73 handle various content types (for example, xv to display images).
74 You can re-run this script and give it a more tailored path. You may
75 want to re-run this script later if you install new programs to
76 display content. An example of this is:
79 % ./mhn.defaults.sh /usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/ucb > mhn.defaults
81 and then move `mhn.defaults' into the nmh `etc' directory.
83 The `mhn.defaults.sh' script only searches for a simple set of programs.
84 If you have specialized programs to handle various types, you will need
85 to edit the `mhn.defaults' file manually. The syntax of this file is
86 described in the man page for `mhn', and in section 9.4 of the book
87 "MH & xmh: Email for Users and Programmers", 3rd edition, by Jerry Peek,
88 on the Internet at <http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mh/book/mh/confmhn.htm>.
90 7) Add an optional global mh.profile, if desired. This profile should be
91 placed in the nmh `etc' directory with the name `mh.profile'. This
92 file will be used to construct the initial .mh_profile of a new nmh
93 user, but will not be consulted after that.
95 -----------------------------------------------
96 Compiler options, or using a different compiler
97 -----------------------------------------------
98 By default, configure will use the "gcc" compiler if found. You can use a
99 different compiler, or add unusual options for compiling or linking that
100 the "configure" script does not know about, by either editing the user
101 configuration section of the top level Makefile (after running configure)
102 or giving "configure" initial values for these variables by setting them
103 in the environment. Using a Bourne-compatible shell (such as sh,ksh,zsh),
105 you can do that on the command line like this:
106 CC=c89 CFLAGS=-O2 LIBS=-lposix ./configure
108 Or on systems that have the "env" program, you can do it like this:
109 env CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include LDFLAGS=-s ./configure
111 ----------------------------------------
112 Building nmh on additional architectures
113 ----------------------------------------
114 To build nmh on additional architectures, you can do a "make distclean".
115 This should restore the nmh source distribution back to its original
116 state. You can then configure nmh as above on other architectures in
117 which you wish to build nmh. Or alternatively, you can use a different
118 build directory for each architecture.
120 ---------------------------------
121 Using a different build directory
122 ---------------------------------
123 You can compile the nmh in a different directory from the one containing
124 the source code. Doing so allows you to compile it on more than one
125 architecture at the same time. To do this, you must use a version of
126 "make" that supports the "VPATH" variable, such as GNU "make". "cd" to
127 the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and
128 run the "configure" script. "configure" automatically checks for the
129 source code in the directory that "configure" is in. For example,
131 cd /usr/local/solaris/nmh
132 /usr/local/src/nmh-1.0/configure
135 ---------------------
136 Options for configure
137 ---------------------
138 --prefix=DIR (DEFAULT is /usr/local/nmh)
139 This will change the base prefix for the installation location
140 for the various parts of nmh. Unless overridden, nmh is installed
141 in ${prefix}/bin, ${prefix}/etc, ${prefix}/lib, ${prefix}/man.
143 --bindir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/bin)
144 nmh's binaries (show, inc, comp, ...) are installed here.
146 --libdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/lib)
147 nmh's support binaries (spost, slocal, mhl, ...) are installed here.
149 --sysconfdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/etc)
150 nmh's config files (mts.conf, mhn.defaults, ...) are installed here.
152 --mandir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/man)
153 nmh's man pages are installed here.
156 Enable debugging support.
158 --enable-masquerade[='draft_from mmailid username_extension']
159 If this option is disabled, the mts.conf file will contain the
160 line "masquerade: " (with no value), which may be manually edited
161 later. You may find it convenient to specify a value at
162 configure-time, however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled,
163 the right value will be there. By default, it is enabled.
165 The above usage shows the default, with all three masquerade
166 options being specified. Any subset of the three may be
169 See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "masquerade:".
171 --enable-mhe (DEFAULT)
172 Add support for the Emacs front-end `mhe'.
174 --with-locking=LOCKTYPE (DEFAULT is dot)
175 Specify the locking mechanism when attempting to "inc" or
176 "msgchk" a local mail spool. Valid options are "dot",
177 "fcntl", "flock", and "lockf". Of the four, dot-locking
178 requires no special kernel or filesystem support, and simply
179 creates a file called "FILE.lock" to indicate that "FILE" is
182 In order to be effective, you should contact the site
183 administrator to find out what locking mechanisms other
184 mail delivery and user programs respect. The most common
185 reason not to use dot-locking is if the mail spool directory
186 is not world- or user-writeable, and thus a lock file cannot
189 --with-ndbm=LIB (DEFAULT is to autodetect)
190 --with-ndbmheader=HEADER (DEFAULT is to autodetect)
191 Specify the header file (eg ndbm.h) and library (eg ndbm) to use
192 to compile against the ndbm database library. By default, configure
193 will try various possibilities until it finds one that works; this
194 option only needs to be specified if the autodetection fails or
195 makes the wrong choice.
197 If either of these options is given then the other must also be
202 nmh-workers@nongnu.org
projects / mmh / blob