# # INSTALL -- installation instructions # -------------- Installing nmh -------------- Please read all of the following instructions before you begin building nmh. You should check the MACHINES file to see if there are any specific build instructions for your operating system. To build nmh, you will need an ANSI C compiler such as gcc. 0) If you have obtained nmh by checking it out of CVS, you will need to run the GNU autotools to regenerate some files. (If your directory already contains a file 'config.h.in' then this has already been done and you do not need to do it.) You can regenerate the files by running the command ./autogen.sh (Note that if you're doing nmh development, you should look at docs/README.developers, since there is other developer-friendly advice there as well.) 1) From the top-level source directory, run the command ./configure [options] This will check the configuration of your OS, and create the include file config.h, as well as the various Makefiles. The configure script accepts various options. The options of most interest are listed in a section below. To see the list of all available options, you can run ./configure --help 2) Look through the user configuration section at the beginning of the generated include file `config.h'. You may want to customize some #defines for your environment. 3) make 4) make install Note that if you have [n]mh files in your install directories with the same names as the files being installed, the old ones will get overwritten without any warning. The only directory that isn't true for is the `etc' directory -- in that directory, the previous copy of each will be backed up as .prev if it differs from the newly-installed copy. Watch for any diff output while make is processing that directory to see if you need to merge changes from *.prev files into the new versions. 5) Edit the file `mts.conf' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory) and make any necessary changes for the mail transport interface you are using. The default `mts.conf' file assumes you retrieve new mail from a local (or NFS mounted) maildrop, and send outgoing mail by injecting the message to a mail transfer agent (such as sendmail) on the local machine. Check the `mh-tailor' man page for a list of all the available options for this file ("masquerade" may be of particular interest). 6) Edit the file `mhn.defaults' (installed in the nmh `etc' directory). This file contains the default profile entries for the nmh command `mhn' and is created by the script `mhn.defaults.sh'. This script will search a generic path (essentially your $PATH) for programs to handle various content types (for example, xv to display images). You can re-run this script and give it a more tailored path. You may want to re-run this script later if you install new programs to display content. An example of this is: % cd support/general % ./mhn.defaults.sh /usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/ucb > mhn.defaults and then move `mhn.defaults' into the nmh `etc' directory. The `mhn.defaults.sh' script only searches for a simple set of programs. If you have specialized programs to handle various types, you will need to edit the `mhn.defaults' file manually. The syntax of this file is described in the man page for `mhn', and in section 9.4 of the book "MH & xmh: Email for Users and Programmers", 3rd edition, by Jerry Peek, on the Internet at . 7) Add an optional global mh.profile, if desired. This profile should be placed in the nmh `etc' directory with the name `mh.profile'. This file will be used to construct the initial .mh_profile of a new nmh user, but will not be consulted after that. ----------------------------------------------- Compiler options, or using a different compiler ----------------------------------------------- By default, configure will use the "gcc" compiler if found. You can use a different compiler, or add unusual options for compiling or linking that the "configure" script does not know about, by either editing the user configuration section of the top level Makefile (after running configure) or giving "configure" initial values for these variables by setting them in the environment. Using a Bourne-compatible shell (such as sh,ksh,zsh), you can do that on the command line like this: CC=c89 CFLAGS=-O2 LIBS=-lposix ./configure Or on systems that have the "env" program, you can do it like this: env CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include LDFLAGS=-s ./configure ---------------------------------------- Building nmh on additional architectures ---------------------------------------- To build nmh on additional architectures, you can do a "make distclean". This should restore the nmh source distribution back to its original state. You can then configure nmh as above on other architectures in which you wish to build nmh. Or alternatively, you can use a different build directory for each architecture. --------------------------------- Using a different build directory --------------------------------- You can compile the nmh in a different directory from the one containing the source code. Doing so allows you to compile it on more than one architecture at the same time. To do this, you must use a version of "make" that supports the "VPATH" variable, such as GNU "make". "cd" to the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and run the "configure" script. "configure" automatically checks for the source code in the directory that "configure" is in. For example, cd /usr/local/solaris/nmh /usr/local/src/nmh-1.0/configure make --------------------- Options for configure --------------------- --prefix=DIR (DEFAULT is /usr/local/nmh) This will change the base prefix for the installation location for the various parts of nmh. Unless overridden, nmh is installed in ${prefix}/bin, ${prefix}/etc, ${prefix}/lib, ${prefix}/man. --bindir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/bin) nmh's binaries (show, inc, comp, ...) are installed here. --libdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/lib) nmh's support binaries (spost, slocal, mhl, ...) are installed here. --sysconfdir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/etc) nmh's config files (mts.conf, mhn.defaults, ...) are installed here. --mandir=DIR (DEFAULT is ${prefix}/man) nmh's man pages are installed here. --enable-debug Enable debugging support. --enable-masquerade[='draft_from mmailid username_extension'] If this option is disabled, the mts.conf file will contain the line "masquerade: " (with no value), which may be manually edited later. You may find it convenient to specify a value at configure-time, however, so that each time nmh is reinstalled, the right value will be there. By default, it is enabled. The above usage shows the default, with all three masquerade options being specified. Any subset of the three may be specified. See the mh-tailor(5) man page for full documentation of "masquerade:". --enable-mhe (DEFAULT) Add support for the Emacs front-end `mhe'. --with-locking=LOCKTYPE (DEFAULT is dot) Specify the locking mechanism when attempting to "inc" or "msgchk" a local mail spool. Valid options are "dot", "fcntl", "flock", and "lockf". Of the four, dot-locking requires no special kernel or filesystem support, and simply creates a file called "FILE.lock" to indicate that "FILE" is locked. In order to be effective, you should contact the site administrator to find out what locking mechanisms other mail delivery and user programs respect. The most common reason not to use dot-locking is if the mail spool directory is not world- or user-writeable, and thus a lock file cannot be created. --with-ndbm=LIB (DEFAULT is to autodetect) --with-ndbmheader=HEADER (DEFAULT is to autodetect) Specify the header file (eg ndbm.h) and library (eg ndbm) to use to compile against the ndbm database library. By default, configure will try various possibilities until it finds one that works; this option only needs to be specified if the autodetection fails or makes the wrong choice. If either of these options is given then the other must also be specified. -- The nmh team nmh-workers@nongnu.org