path: root/INSTALL

This file is INSTALL.  It contains installation instructions for Expect.

If you do not have Tcl, get it (Expect's README explains how) and
install it.  The rest of these instructions assume that you have Tcl
installed.

If you are installing Expect on a single architecture, or are just
trying it out to see whether it is worth installing, follow the
"Simple Installation" below.  If you are installing Expect on multiple
architectures or the "Simple Installation" instructions are not
sufficient, see "Sophisticated Installations" below.

--------------------
Permissions
--------------------

On a Cray, you must be root to compile Expect.  See the FAQ for why
this is.

If you want shared libs on Linux, you must be root in order to run
ldconfig.  See the ldconfig man page for more info.

--------------------
Simple Installation
--------------------

By default, the Tcl source directory is assumed to be in the same
directory as the Expect source directory.  For example, in this
listing, Expect and Tcl are both stored in /usr/local/src:

	/usr/local/src/tcl8.0		(actual version may be different)
	/usr/local/src/expect-5.24	(actual version may be different)

If Tcl is stored elsewhere, the easiest way to deal with this is to
create a symbolic link to its real directory.  For example, from the
Expect directory, type:

	ln -s /some/where/else/src/tcl8.0 ..

The same applies for Tk, if you have it.  (Tk is optional.)

Run "./configure".  This will generate a Makefile (from a prototype
called "Makefile.in") appropriate to your system.  (This step must be
done in the foreground because configure performs various tests on
your controlling tty.  If you want to do this step in the background
in the future, automate it using Expect!)

Most people will not need to make any changes to the generated
Makefile and can go on to the next step.  If you want though, you can
edit the Makefile and change any definitions as appropriate for your
site.  All the definitions you are likely to want to change are
clearly identified and described at the beginning of the file.

To build only the stand-alone Expect program, run "make expect".  This
is appropriate even if you still haven't decided whether to install
Expect, are still curious about it, and want to do the minimum
possible in order to experiment with it.

To build everything, run "make".  If "configure" found Tk and X on
your system, this will build "expectk" (Expect with Tk).

Once expect is built, you can cd to the example directory and try out
some of the examples (see the README file in the example directory).
Note that if Tcl has not yet been installed, this won't work.  In this
case, see the instructions "Trying Expect Without Installing Tcl"
below.

"make install" will install Expect.  If you built Expectk, that will
be installed as well.  So will the documentation and some of the most
useful examples.

If you want shared libs on Linux, you must now su to root and run
ldconfig on the shared library.  See the ldconfig man page for more
info.

A handful of people running "pure" 4.2BSD systems have noted that
expect fails to link due to lack of getopt and vprintf.  You can get
these from uunet or any good archive site.

--------------------
Trying Expect Without Installing Tcl
--------------------

Once expect is built, you can try it out.  If Tcl has not been
installed (but it has been compiled), you will need to define the
environment variable TCL_LIBRARY.  It should name the directory
contain the Tcl libraries.  For example, if you are using csh with Tcl
8.0.3:

	$ setenv TCL_LIBRARY ../tcl8.0.3/library

Now you can run expect.

The same advice applies to Tk.  If it is available but has not been
installed, you can try out expectk but only after defining TK_LIBRARY.
For example, if you are using csh with Tk 8.0.3:

	$ setenv TK_LIBRARY ../tk8.0.3/library

Now you can run expectk.

--------------------
Sophisticated Installations
--------------------

The following instructions provide some suggestions for handling
complex installations.

--------------------
Changing Defaults
--------------------

The configure script allows you to customize the Expect configuration
for your site; for details on how you can do this, type "./configure
-help" or refer to the autoconf documentation (not included here).
Expect's configure supports the following flags in addition to the
standard ones:

	--verbose		Cause configure to describe
				what it is checking and what it decides.

	--enable-shared		Compile Expect as a shared library if it
				can figure out how to do that on this
				platform.  (You must have already
				compiled Tcl with this flag.)

	--disable-load		This switch is ignored so that you can
				configure Expect with the same configure
				command as Tcl.  If you want to disable
				dynamic loading, configure Tcl with this
				flag and then reconfigure Expect.

	--enable-gcc		This switch is ignored so that you can
				configure Expect with the same configure
				command as Tcl.  If you want to enable gcc,
				configure Tcl with it and then reconfigure
				Expect.  Expect will inherit the definition
				that way.  It is not safe to modify the
				Makefile to use gcc by hand.  If you do
				this, then information related to dynamic
				linking will be incorrect.

	--enable-threads	This switch is ignored so that you can
				configure Expect with the same configure
				command as Tcl.

	--with-tcl=...		Specifies the directory containing Tcl's
				configure file (tclConfig.sh).

	--with-tclinclude=...	Specifies the directory containing Tcl's
				private include files (such as tclInt.h)

	--with-tk=...		Specifies the directory containing Tk's
				configure file (tkConfig.sh).

	--with-tkinclude=...	Specifies the directory containing Tk's
				private include files (such as tkInt.h)

Some of the defaults in "configure" can be overridden by environment
variables.  This is a convenience intended for environments that are
likely to affect any program that you configure and install.

The following environment variables are supported.  If you use these,
consider adding them to your .login file so that other installation
scripts can make use of them.

CC		C compiler
CFLAGS		Flags to C compiler
CPPFLAGS	Flags to C preprocessor
LDFLAGS		Flags to linker
LIBS		Libraries
CONFIG_SHELL	Shell for configure and Make

Settings can also be given on the command line.  For example, you
could tell configure about flags from a Bourne-compatible shell as
follows:

     CFLAGS=-O2 LIBS=-lposix ./configure

Although configure will do some searching for Tcl (and all of this
discussion holds true for Tk as well), configure likes to find the Tcl
source directory in the parent directory of Expect and will use that
Tcl if it exists.  To make sure Tcl can be found this way (if it is
located somewhere else), create a symbolic link in Expect's parent
directory to where the Tcl directory is.

By default, configure uses the latest Tcl it can find.  You can
override this by creating a symbolic link of "tcl" which points to the
release you want.

If you can't or don't want to create symbolic links, you can instead
indicate where Tcl and Tk are by using the following environment variables:
 
with_tcl		Directory containing Tcl configure file (tclConfig.h)
with_tclinclude		Directory containing Tcl include files
with_tkinclude		Directory containing Tk include files
with_tk			Directory containing Tk binary library (tkConfig.h)

--------------------
Multiple-Architecture Installation
--------------------

You might want to compile a software package in a different directory
from the one that contains the source code.  Doing this allows you to
compile the package for several architectures simultaneously from the
same copy of the source code and keep multiple sets of object files on
disk.

To compile the package in a different directory from the one
containing the source code, you must use a version of make that
supports the VPATH variable.  GNU make and most other recent make
programs can do this.

cd to the directory where you want the object files and executables to
go and run configure.  configure automatically checks for the source
code in the directory that configure is in and in ..  If configure
reports that it cannot find the source code, run configure with the
option --srcdir=dir, where dir is the directory that contains the
source code.

You can save some disk space by installing architecture-independent
files (e.g., scripts, include files) in a different place than
architecture-dependent files (e.g., binaries, libraries).  To do this,
edit the Makefile after configure builds it, or have configure create
the Makefile with the right definitions in the first place.  To have
configure do it, use the following options to configure:

	--prefix=indep
	--exec-prefix=dep

where dep is the root of the tree in which to store
architecture-dependent files and indep is the root in which to
store -dependent files.  For example, you might invoke configure this
way:

	configure --prefix=/usr/local/bin --exec-prefix=/usr/local/bin/arch

--------------------
Test Suite
--------------------

Patterned after the Tcl test suite, I have begun building a test suite
in the subdirectory "test".  It is still incomplete however you may
use by typing "make test" in this directory.  You should then see a
printout of the test files processed.  If any errors occur, you'll see
a much more substantial printout for each error.  See the README file
in the "tests" directory for more information on the test suite.

Note that the test suite assumes the existence of certain programs to
use as interactive programs.  If you are missing these or they behave
differently, errors may be reported.  Similarly, the test suite
assumes certain other things about your system, such as the sane stty
parameters.

You may also try some of the programs distribute in the example
directory (see the README file in the example directory).  They are a
strong indication of whether Expect works or not.  If you have any
problems with them, let me know.

--------------------
Uninstalling
--------------------

"make uninstall" removes all the files that "make install" creates
(excluding those in the current directory).

--------------------
Cleaning Up
--------------------

Several "clean" targets are available to reduce space consumption of
the Expect source.  The two most useful are as follows:

"make clean" deletes all files from the current directory that were
created by "make"

"make distclean" is like "make clean", but it also deletes files
created by "configure"

Other targets can be found in the Makefile.  They follow the GNU
Makefile conventions.