diff --git a/doc/FAQ b/doc/FAQ index 6c894edeb..d81266ab5 100644 --- a/doc/FAQ +++ b/doc/FAQ @@ -11,8 +11,7 @@ Frequently Asked Questions + 1.4 What else do I need to run MC? + 1.5 Is GNU Midnight Commander Public Domain? Copyrighted? + 1.6 Where can I get GNU Midnight Commander? - + 1.7 I don't have FTP access. Where can I get MC? - + 1.8 I cannot compile MC. What should I do? + + 1.7 I cannot compile MC. What should I do? * 2 Keyboard + 2.1 What does documentation mean with the C-?, M-? and F? @@ -155,10 +154,8 @@ Frequently Asked Questions You need a POSIX (Unix compatible) operating system. If you are running Windows, use Cygwin. - To compile any edition you need to have glib 1.2.x or newer - installed. It's available at ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/. If you - don't have glib installed already, please note that glib 2.x is much - harder to compile, so your first choice should be glib 1.2.10. + To compile any edition you need to have glib 2.x installed. + It's available at ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/. If you want to use mouse on the Linux console you need the gpm daemon from ftp://ftp.systemy.it/pub/develop/. You need nothing extra to @@ -182,21 +179,15 @@ Frequently Asked Questions 1.6 Where can I get GNU Midnight Commander? - The main site is ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/stable/sources/mc/ + The main site is http://www.midnight-commander.org -1.7 I don't have FTP access. Where can I get MC? - - Most GNU/Linux distributions include GNU Midnight Commander. For - example, Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware and SuSE. - -1.8 I cannot compile MC. What should I do? +1.7 I cannot compile MC. What should I do? Make sure you have read the INSTALL file in the sources. Report the error messages exactly as they appear, mention the versions of your OS, your compiler and whatever else software you think is relevant. If you have compile problems in the VFS code, try disabling it by - using "--without-vfs" switch. As the last resort, you can use - precompiled binaries from the GNU Midnight Commander website. + using "--disable-vfs" option. 2 Keyboard @@ -240,10 +231,6 @@ Frequently Asked Questions http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/terminfo/ ftp://dickey.his.com/ncurses/ - You can force Midnight Commander to use the termcap database by - giving --with-termcap option to the configure script. The default - is to use terminfo. - If you don't have permissions to edit terminal databases you can use Learn keys feature of Midnight Commander instead. Press Esc 9 o k and follow instructions. @@ -353,12 +340,6 @@ Frequently Asked Questions export TERM=vt100 - If this doesn't help you can recompile MC to use termcap instead of - terminfo: - - ./configure --with-termcap - make - 4.2 Why don't line drawing characters work? Since version 4.0.13 there's the command line option -a to force use @@ -557,19 +538,6 @@ all anymore! xterm|xterm-color|vs100|xterm terminal emulator -4.9 Why are there both terminfo and termcap? Wouldn't one database be -enough? - - You might want to read the Unix-Haters Handbook at - http://catalog.com/hopkins/unix-haters/handbook.html. It lists many - more reasons why Unix sucks. - - You can configure which terminal database you want to use with the - "--with-termcap" and "--with-terminfo" flags of configure. If you - don't specify them, the configure script will try to use terminfo if - available otherwise it will use termcap. - - 5 Graphical user interface 5.1 Xview, Tk and Gnome editions? @@ -750,13 +718,6 @@ indenting increases with each line! upgrade your shell to a newer version. If you use something else than bash, tcsh or zsh, subshell support is disabled automatically. - If disabling subshell doesn't help, try to reconfigure MC with - "--with-included-slang" and "--with-termcap" options and recompile. - If this helps, something is wrong with your terminfo database or - shared S-Lang library. For better terminfo databases see chapter 4 - of this FAQ. For a better S-Lang library, upgrade to a newer version - or keep using the "--with-included-slang" option. - Another reason is problems with gpm. Try using "--nomouse" option to see if it makes any difference. Restarting gpm can help. Sometimes it's enough to move the mouse. @@ -785,6 +746,7 @@ indenting increases with each line! * Norbert Warmuth * Alex I. Tkachenko + Alessandro Rubini has been specially helpful with debugging and enhancing of the mouse support. John E. Davis has made his S-Lang library available to us and answered many questions about it. @@ -810,9 +772,21 @@ indenting increases with each line! * Jon Stevens * Adam Tla/lka + Current list of active developers can be found here: + http://www.midnight-commander.org/wiki/McDevelopers + + This page lists everbody who has provided a patch or + has written code for the midnight-commander in the past: + http://www.midnight-commander.org/wiki/McContributors + 10.2 Do I dare to use a development version? - That's up to you to decide. Development versions may have nasty bugs + Yes, of course. Feel free to test: + http://www.midnight-commander.org/wiki#Downloading + As we do our development in git, please do a git checkout + of the master branch and build it + + But always remember: development versions may have nasty bugs at some points of time. It's up to you to judge whether the new features and fixes for the bugs you know outweigh the risk of unknown bugs. @@ -822,7 +796,12 @@ indenting increases with each line! You might first want to get the newest development version to see if the bug is fixed or the feature is added already. - Send your report/request to mc-devel@gnome.org or mc@gnome.org. + If this is not the case, feel free to add a ticket in our ticket-system, + which is located here: http://www.midnight-commander.org/newticket + + If you want to send an email instead write your report to mc-devel@gnome.org + or mc@gnome.org. + These mailing lists are the most certain way to contact the developers. Remember to mention if you are not on the mailing list to make sure that you will receive a copy of replies. @@ -889,6 +868,16 @@ an answer? To subscribe visit http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel/ + mc-commits@googlegroups.com + mailing list only for applyed commits into master/stable branches + To subscribe visit + http://groups.google.com/group/mc-commits/subscribe + + mc-bugs@googlegroups.com + Mailing list only for tickets and comments (use it as RSS :) ) + To subscribe visit + http://groups.google.com/group/mc-bugs/subscribe + 11.3 Where should I look on the World Wide Web for MC stuff? There is a WWW page for Midnight Commander. The URL is: diff --git a/doc/HACKING b/doc/HACKING index 75af6a9ea..0eaf195b2 100644 --- a/doc/HACKING +++ b/doc/HACKING @@ -5,28 +5,32 @@ This document is a guide how to develop GNU Midnight Commander. It's quite incomplete, but may be worth reading anyway. The document was written by Miguel de Icaza and reworked by Pavel -Roskin. Some parts were taken from the messages posted in the mailing +Roskin and later from Patrick Winnertz. + Some parts were taken from the messages posted in the mailing lists. -Compiling from CVS +Compiling from GIT ================== -To compile GNU Midnight commander from CVS, the following software is +To compile GNU Midnight commander from GIT, the following software is required: Autoconf 2.52 and above (latest is recommended) Automake 1.5 and above (latest is recommended) Gettext 0.11.5 and above -Glib 1.2.6 and above (2.x is recommended) +Glib 2.6 and above (2.14 and higher is recommended) + +Full list of requirements you can see at: +http://www.midnight-commander.org/wiki/doc/buildAndInstall/req It is recommended that all those tools are installed with the same prefix. Make sure that the tools with the right version are first in PATH. Once you have the right tools, run `autogen.sh' - it will generate -everything necessary for the build and run `configure'. Arguments given -to `autogen.sh' are passed to `configure'. Then run `make' as usually. +everything necessary for the build `configure'. Then run 'configure' +and `make' as usually. The distribution tarball is created by the command `make distcheck'. This command can take a while. @@ -44,19 +48,13 @@ used in the AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION macro, which is 0.11.5. Working with GNU Midnight Commander =================================== -Please use the CVS version. It may be quite different from the released -versions. A lot of cleanup is going on. The CVS version may be easier +Please use the GIT version. It may be quite different from the released +versions. A lot of cleanup is going on. The GIT version may be easier to understand, in addition to the obvious fact that the merging is -easier with the CVS version. +easier with the GIT version. -There are some tools in the maint directory on CVS. They are not -included with releases or snapshots. You may be interested to look at -them if you are going to work on the project for an extended period of -time. In particular, the release procedure is described there. - -In order to compile GNU Midnight Commander from a clean CVS checkout you -should use autogen.sh instead of configure. Arguments passed to -autogen.sh are passed to configure after it's generated. +In order to compile GNU Midnight Commander from a clean GIT checkout you +should use 'autogen.sh && ./configure' instead of 'configure'. GNU Midnight Commander uses Autoconf and Automake, with make it fairly portable. However, GNU Make is strongly recommended for development @@ -68,10 +66,6 @@ If you add or remove any files, please change Makefile.am in the same directory accordingly. When doing significant changes in the tree structure, "make distcheck" is strongly recommended. -If you have etags installed, you can run "make tags" and use tags in -emacs to find functions or variables. But you can also use the internal -editor and the "Find File" command to find any text in the source tree. - GNU Autoconf allows you to test several different configurations are once. To do so, use the so called out-of-tree (or VPATH) compilation. Create separate empty directories and run configure with full path from @@ -118,7 +112,7 @@ mc_open() instead. edit - the internal editor. -This code has been contributed by Paul Sheer, the author of Cooledit. +This code has been contributed by Paul Sheer, the author of Cooledit. The internal editor shares some code with Cooledit, but now it's developed as part of GNU Midnight Commander. @@ -127,30 +121,23 @@ src - the main part of the code. This code includes the dialog manager written by Radek Doulik and source code of the main application. -slang - stripped down S-Lang library. - -It's provided to allow compilation that don't have the S-Lang library -with complete headers or the library is broken. Please avoid changing -this code. If you do change it, please consider contributing your -changes to the maintainers of S-Lang. - - Code structure - details ======================== GNU Midnight Commander uses extensively the dialog manager written by Radek Doulik. To understand how the dialog manager works, please read -the dialog.c. You will find the basic widgets in the files widget.c. +the dialog.c. You will find the basic widgets in the files widget.c. Some more high-level functions, e.g. to display a message box, are located in wtools.c. This file also contains the Quick Dialog code, which makes it easier to create complex dialogs. Files findme.c, popt.c, poptconfig.c, popthelp.c and poptparse.c come from the popt library used to parse the command line. They should not -be modified unless absolutely necessary. +be modified unless absolutely necessary. At near time these stuff will +removed. The files util.c and utilunix.c have a lot of utility functions. Get -familiar with them, they are very simple. +familiar with them, they are very simple. glib is used for memory allocation and for some utility functions, such as manipulation with lists and trees. gmodule (part of the glib @@ -285,7 +272,7 @@ The official place for bug reports is: http://www.midnight-commander.org/ -There are various unofficial sources where bug reports and patches can +There are various unofficial sources where bug reports and patches can be found (NOT maintained by the MC team).