3. Installation
How do I turn off statically linked executables?
Each Unix platform Makefile defines two special variables, UNIX_CAN_BUILD_STATIC
and UNIX_CAN_BUILD_DYNAMIC, for its platform. These values control whether
the Makefiles will request compilation of statically linked or dynamically linked
executables, respectively. Many people who compile AbiWord will not have all the
library archives necessary for total static linkage (these files are often named with a ".a" or ".lib" suffix).
In this case one can set the variable UNIX_CAN_BUILD_STATIC to a value of 0 either
in the platform configuration file (abi/src/config/platforms/.mk) or
on the 'make' command line ("make UNIX_CAN_BUILD_STATIC=0").
How does 'make install' work?
The "install" target is provided for Unix installation of AbiSuite utilies;
the target currently does nothing for Win32, Macintosh, or BeOS platforms.
A "make install", when run as root, will install AbiSuite applications,
libraries, samples, and other resources in /usr/local/AbiSuite.
It will also install two symblic links, /usr/local/bin/AbiWord
and /usr/local/bin/abiword, which both point to /usr/local/AbiSuite/bin/AbiWord.
A note for users of "make install"": you'll need the abidistfiles and
unixfonts trees
as peers to the abi tree for the process to complete. These modules
provide extra library files, fonts, samples, icons, and other data that needs to be
installed for the applications to function properly. If you're using CVS access to the tree you can just issue the
command "cvs checkout abidistfiles unixfonts" at the same level you issued your original
"cvs checkout abi" command. This will put abidistfiles and unixfonts at a peer level
to the abi tree. "make install" should now work.
In the future we will provide abidistfiles as standard zip and
.tar.gz packages, like we do for unixfonts.
The "install" target obeys the "prefix" variable--"prefix"
is set to "/usr/local" by default. You can have make set the variable for
you if you invoke it like "make prefix=/home/jschmoe/dist install".
The Makefile will then install AbiSuite applications and resources in
/home/jschmoe/dist/AbiSuite and symbolic links in /home/jschmoe/dist/bin.
4. Debugging
How do I debug AbiWord under Linux?
AbiWord normally runs from a wrapper script that makes changes to your
Unix environment and X server font path before starting the executable.
If you want to run AbiWord in a debugger, you'll need to do these things
manually first--these things are actually very simple.
This
archived mailing list message will explain how to get started debugging
AbiWord using a debugger like gdb.
What is the proper etiquette for participating in the AbiWord development community?
There aren't too many rules, but there are general guidelines of Open Source development.
You will want to look at the AbiSource code guideline document in the
/abi/docs directory. The current AbiSource development style is outlined in a previous
mailing list post, located
here. For the rest of the story, it would be better to steer you toward
some excellent meatier answers from other Open Source all-stars:
Havoc Pennington:
http://www106.pair.com/rhp/hacking.html
Raph Levien:
http://www.advogato.org/article/22.html