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[xemacs-hg @ 2005-02-04 03:04:04 by ben] Remove out-of-date doc files * BUGS, README.packages: Delete, incorporate into FAQ. README: Incorporate into FAQ. Delete everything but text pointing to FAQ.
author ben
date Fri, 04 Feb 2005 03:04:06 +0000
parents 715eed24e30e
children 0ef278ff2894
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1 This directory tree holds version 21.5 of XEmacs. 1 This directory tree holds version 21.5 of XEmacs.
2 2
3 The information in this file has been superseded by the XEmacs FAQ.
3 4
4 *** What is XEmacs? 5 The easiest way to read the FAQ is to go to
5 6
6 XEmacs is a powerful, highly customizable open source text editor and 7 http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.5/html/xemacs-faq_1.html
7 application development system, with full GUI support. It is protected 8
8 under the GNU Public License and related to other versions of Emacs, in 9 You can also the local copy of the FAQ inside XEmacs by using
9 particular GNU Emacs. Its emphasis is on modern graphical user 10 use Help->XEmacs FAQ from the menu, or `C-h F'.
10 interface support and an open software development model, similar to 11
11 Linux. XEmacs has an active development community numbering in the 12 If you don't have XEmacs running and can't access the web,
12 hundreds (and thousands of active beta testers on top of this), and runs 13 look directly at `man/xemacs-faq.texi' or `info/xemacs-faq.info'.
13 on all versions of MS Windows, on Linux, and on nearly every other
14 version of Unix in existence. Support for XEmacs has been supplied by
15 Sun Microsystems, University of Illinois, Lucid, ETL/Electrotechnical
16 Laboratory, Amdahl Corporation, BeOpen, and others, as well as the
17 unpaid time of a great number of individual developers.
18 14
19 15
20
21 *** What platforms does it run on?
22
23 -- MS Windows (It has been tested on NT, 2000, 95, 98, and ME; you
24 can also compile Cygwin and MinGW versions.)
25 -- Unix (It is regularly tested on Linux, Solaris, SunOS, HP/UX,
26 FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS aka BSDI, Tru64 aka DEC/OSF, SCO5,
27 and probably others. It should work on all versions of Unix
28 created in the last 10 years or so, perhaps with a bit of
29 work on more obscure platforms to correct bit-rot. It uses
30 a sophisticated configuration system to auto-detect zillions
31 of features that are implemented differently in different
32 versions of Unix, so it will probably work on your vendor's
33 version, possibly with a bit of tweaking, even if we've
34 never heard of it.)
35 -- MacOS/X (As an X Windows application. Unfortunately there is no
36 support currently for MacOS-specific features.)
37
38 There is also a port of XEmacs 19.14 (an older version, circa 1996)
39 for all versions of MacOS, with extensive support for MacOS-specific
40 features. See the FAQ for more details.
41
42 There are rumors of an in-progress port to OS/2. See the FAQ.
43
44 XEmacs will probably never work on MS/DOS or Windows 3.1, and we're
45 not particularly interested in patches for these platforms, as they
46 would introduce huge amounts of code clutter due to the woefully
47 underfeatured nature of these systems. (See GNU Emacs for a port to
48 MS/DOS.)
49
50
51
52 *** Where's the FAQ?
53
54 Look at `man/xemacs-faq.texi'.
55
56 For the very latest version, see
57 http://cvs.xemacs.org/cgi-bin/cvswebxe/xemacs/man/xemacs-faq.texi.
58
59
60
61 *** Where's the latest version?
62
63 For up-to-date information on XEmacs, see http://www.xemacs.org.
64
65 To download XEmacs, see http://ftp.xemacs.org/ or
66 ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/.
67
68 For the latest experimental sources, see http://cvs.xemacs.org/, which
69 gives instructions on how to get started with CVS access.
70
71 There are numerous mailing lists for discussion of XEmacs. The
72 current description of these lists can be found at
73 http://www.xemacs.org/Lists/, or see `etc/MAILINGLISTS'. General
74 discussion of bugs, new features, etc. takes place on
75 xemacs-beta@xemacs.org.
76
77
78
79 *** How do I build and install XEmacs?
80
81 See the file `etc/NEWS' for information on new features and other
82 user-visible changes since the last version of XEmacs.
83
84 The file `INSTALL' in this directory says how to bring up XEmacs on
85 Unix and Cygwin, once you have loaded the entire subtree of this
86 directory.
87
88 See the file `nt/README' for instructions on building XEmacs for
89 Microsoft Windows.
90
91 The file 'README.packages' will guide you in the installation of
92 (essential) add on packages.
93
94
95
96 *** How do I deal with bugs or with problems building, installing, or running?
97
98 The file `PROBLEMS' contains information on many common problems that
99 occur in building, installing and running XEmacs.
100
101 Reports of bugs in XEmacs should be sent to xemacs-beta@xemacs.org.
102 You can also post to the newsgroup comp.emacs.xemacs (or equivalentlt,
103 send to the mailing list xemacs@xemacs.org), but it is less likely
104 that the developers will see it in a timely fashion. See the "Bugs"
105 section of the XEmacs manual for more information on how to report
106 bugs. (The file `BUGS' in this directory explains how you can find
107 and read that section using the Info files that come with XEmacs.)
108 See `etc/MAILINGLISTS' for more information on mailing lists relating
109 to XEmacs.
110
111
112 *** How do I get started developing XEmacs?
113
114 First, get yourself set up under CVS so that you can access the CVS
115 repositories containing the XEmacs sources and the XEmacs packages.
116
117 Next, set up your layout. This is important, as a good layout will
118 facilitate getting things done efficiently, while a bad layout will could
119 lead to disaster, as you can't figure out which code is the most recent,
120 which can be thrown away, etc. We suggest the following layout: (feel free
121 to make changes)
122
123 -- Everything goes under /src/xemacs (use a different directory if you
124 want). From now, instead of saying /src/xemacs, we use <xsrc-top>, to
125 make it easier in case someone picked a different directory.
126
127 -- Package source is in <xsrc-top>/package-src.
128
129 -- Installed packages go under <xsrc-top>/xemacs-packages, and
130 <xsrc-top>/mule-packages.
131
132 -- A "workspace" is a complete copy of the sources, in which you do work of
133 a particular kind. Workspaces can be differentiated by which branch of
134 the source tree they extend off of -- usually either the stable or
135 experimental, unless other branches have been created (for example, Ben
136 created a branch for his Mule work because (1) the project was long-term
137 and involved an enormous number of changes, (2) people wanted to be able
138 to look at what his work in progress, and (3) he wanted to be able to
139 check things in and in general use source-code control, since it was a
140 long-term project). Workspaces are also differentiated in what their
141 purpose is -- general working workspace, workspace for particular
142 projects, workspace keeping the latest copy of the code in one of the
143 branches without mods, etc.
144
145 -- Various workspaces are subdirectories under <xsrc-top>, e.g.:
146
147 -- <xsrc-top>/working (the workspace you're actively working on,
148 periodically synched up with the latest trunk)
149
150 -- <xsrc-top>/stable (for making changes to the stable version of
151 XEmacs, which sits on a branch)
152
153 -- <xsrc-top>/unsigned-removal (a workspace for a specific, difficult
154 task that's going to affect lots of source and take a long time, and
155 so best done in its own workspace without the interference of other
156 work you're doing. Also, you can commit just this one large change,
157 separate from all the other changes).
158
159 -- <xsrc-top>/latest (a copy of the latest sources on the trunk,
160 i.e. the experimental version of XEmacs, with no patches in it;
161 either update it periodically, by hand, or set up a cron job to do it
162 automatically). Set it up so it can be built, and build it so you
163 have a working XEmacs. (Building it might also go into the cron job.)
164
165 This workspace serves a number of purposes:
166 -- 1. You always have a recent version of XEmacs you can compare
167 against when something you're working on breaks. It's true
168 that you can do this with cvs diff, but when you need to do
169 some serious investigation, this method just fails.
170 -- 2. You (almost) always have a working, up-to-date executable that
171 can be used when your executable is crashing and you need to
172 keep developing it, or when you need an `xemacs' to build
173 packages, etc.
174 -- 3. When creating new workspaces, you can just copy the `latest'
175 workspace using GNU cp -a. You have all the .elc's built,
176 everything else probably configured, any spare files in place
177 (e.g. some annoying xpm.dll under Windows, etc.).
178
179 -- <xsrc-top>/latest-stable/ (equivalent to <xsrc-top>/latest/, but
180 for the Stable branch of XEmacs, rather than the Experimental branch
181 of XEmacs). This may or may not be necessary depending on how much
182 development you do of the stable branch.
183
184 -- <xsrc-top>/xemacsweb is a workspace for working on the XEmacs web site.
185
186 -- <xsrc-top>/in-patches for patches received from email and saved to files.
187
188 -- <xsrc-top>/out-patches for locally-generated patches to be sent to
189 xemacs-patches@xemacs.org. Less useful now that the patcher util has been
190 developed.
191
192 -- <xsrc-top>/build, for build trees when compiling and testing XEmacs with
193 various configuration options turned off and on. The scripts in
194 xemacs-builds/ben (see below) can be used to automate building XEmacs
195 workspaces with many different configuration options and automatically
196 filtering out the normal output so that you see only the abnormal
197 output.
198
199 -- <xsrc-top>/xemacs-builds, for the xemacs-builds module, which you need
200 to check out separately in CVS. This contains scripts used for building
201 XEmacs, automating and simplifying using CVS, etc. Under various
202 people's directories are their own build and other scripts. The
203 currently most-maintained scripts are under ben/, where there are easily
204 configurable scripts that can be used to easily build any workspace
205 (esp. if you've more or less followed the layout presented above)
206 unattended, with one or more configuration states (there's a
207 pre-determined list of the most useful, but it's easy to change). The
208 output is filtered and split up in various ways so that you can identify
209 which output came from where, and you can see the output either full or
210 with all "normal" output except occasional status messages filtered so
211 that you only see the abnormal ones.
212
213 *** What's the basic layout of the code?
214
215 The file `configure' is a shell script to acclimate XEmacs to the
216 oddities of your processor and operating system. It will create a
217 file named `Makefile' (a script for the `make' program), which helps
218 automate the process of building and installing emacs. See INSTALL
219 for more detailed information.
220
221 The file `configure.in' is the input used by the autoconf program to
222 construct the `configure' script. Since XEmacs has configuration
223 requirements that autoconf can't meet, `configure.in' uses an unholy
224 marriage of custom-baked configuration code and autoconf macros; it
225 may be wise to avoid rebuilding `configure' from `configure.in' when
226 possible.
227
228 The file `Makefile.in' is a template used by `configure' to create
229 `Makefile'.
230
231 There are several subdirectories:
232
233 `src' holds the C code for XEmacs (the XEmacs Lisp interpreter and its
234 primitives, the redisplay code, and some basic editing functions).
235 `lisp' holds the XEmacs Lisp code for XEmacs (most everything else).
236 `lib-src' holds the source code for some utility programs for use by
237 or with XEmacs, like movemail and etags.
238 `etc' holds miscellaneous architecture-independent data files
239 XEmacs uses, like the tutorial text and the Zippy the Pinhead quote
240 database. The contents of the `lisp', `info' and `man'
241 subdirectories are architecture-independent too.
242 `lwlib' holds the C code for the X toolkit objects used by XEmacs.
243 `info' holds the Info documentation tree for XEmacs.
244 `man' holds the source code for the XEmacs online documentation.
245 `nt' holds files used compiling XEmacs under Microsoft Windows.