Build requirements for GNU Midnight Commander --------------------------------------------- - glibc - gcc - make - autoconf >= 2.64 - automake >= 1.12 - libtool - glib2 >= 2.32 - slang2 or ncurses - gettext >= 0.18.2 - libssh2 >= 1.2.8 is required only for sftp vfs - libaspell to support spell checking in the internal editor - ext2fs >= 1.42.4 to support ext{2,3,4}fs extended attributes Installation instructions for GNU Midnight Commander ---------------------------------------------------- Midnight Commander is written in a portable manner and uses GNU Autoconf for configuration, so it is expected to compile without changes on many other operating systems. If you are installing from an official tarball, it already contains pre-bootstrapped autotools build system (specifically the `configure' script). In the case that you are installing from a version control checkout, you need to bootstrap the build system yourself first using the `autogen.sh' script. Note that to do this you would need to install the autotools suite first and not only direct mc build dependencies. The `configure' shell script attempts to guess correct values for various system-dependent variables used during compilation, and creates the makefiles. It also creates a file `config.status' that you can run in the future to recreate the current configuration. To compile this package: 1. Configure the package for your system. Normally, you just `cd' to the directory containing the package's source code and type `./configure'. To compile the package in a different directory than the one containing the source code, you must use a version of `make' supporting the `VPATH' variable, such as GNU `make'. Change to the directory where you want the object files and executables to go and run the `configure' script with the full path. If for some reason `configure' cannot find the source code directory, run `configure' with the option `--srcdir=DIR', where DIR is the directory that contains the source code. By default, `make install' will install the package's files in `/usr/local/bin', `/usr/local/man', etc. You can specify an installation prefix other than `/usr/local' by giving `configure' the option `--prefix=PATH'. If compiled on GNU/Linux, Midnight Commander detects if you have the gpm library installed. If you installed the gpm mouse library in a non-standard place, you will need to use the --with-gpm-mouse flag with the directory base where you installed the gpm package. `configure' recognizes the following options (the list may be incomplete, use `configure --help' to get the full list): `--help' Print a summary of the options to `configure' and exit. `--quiet' `--silent' Do not print messages saying which checks are being made. `--version' Print the version of Autoconf used to generate the `configure' script, and exit. `--without-edit' Configure GNU Midnight Commander to be compiled without the built-in file editor. The built-in editor is compiled in by default. `--enable-aspell[=prefix]' This option adds spell check support to the internal editor using libaspell and optionally sets path to libaspell installation prefix [default=/usr]. Disabled by default. `--without-gpm-mouse' Use this flag to disable gpm mouse support (e.g. if you want to use mouse only on X terminals). `--with-glib-static' Force linking against glib statically. This option is intended for building binaries for distribution purposes and may not work on some operating systems. `--with-subshell[=optional]', `--without-subshell' The subshell support is by default turned on, you can disable this by using the --without-subshell option. If you pass the =optional parameter, then the subshell support is turned off by default. To turn it on, specify the `-U' option to the program. `--without-x' By default, the Midnight Commander tries to connect to the X Window System events to query the status of the keyboard modifiers, such as Control, Shift and Alt, when invoked in a terminal emulator under X11. This is necessary (but not always sufficient) to recognize some optional but handy key combinations like Ctrl-Home and Shift-Cursor keys. Use `--without-x' if the dependency on X11 libraries is not desired. `--disable-largefile' This option disables support for large files (2 gigabytes and more) on the systems where file operations use 32-bit offsets by default, but support for 64-bit offsets is available. May be useful for slow processors and embedded systems. `--enable-charset' This option adds support for selecting character set of the text in the internal viewer and editor and converting it on the fly. The implementation of this option is currently incomplete. `--disable-background' This option disables support for background operations. Background operations allow to perform some tasks such as copying files in a separate background process. Any messages from the background process are forwarded to the foreground process. More advanced dialogs cannot be forwarded yet, so the background process uses the default. Background code is known to be less stable than the rest of the code, so you may want to disable it at the compile time. `--with-homedir' This option allow users to place user config directories in any place. By default value is 'XDG', this mean, mc will respect XDG standards. If other value is specified, this will used as directory name (relative to $HOME if path is relative, or as is if path is absolute). VFS options: - - - - - - `--disable-vfs' This option disables the Virtual File System switch code in the Midnight Commander and uses the standard file system calls for file access. If you specify this option, you won't get the transparent access to archives and remote directories. `--enable-vfs-cpio' (on by default) Support for cpio filesystem `--enable-vfs-tar' (on by default) Support for tar filesystem `--enable-vfs-ftp' (on by default) Support for FTP vfs `--enable-vfs-shell' (on by default) Support for SHELL vfs `--enable-vfs-sftp' (auto) Support for SFTP vfs `--enable-vfs-extfs' (on by default) Support for extfs `--enable-vfs-sfs` (on by default) Support for sfs `--enable-vfs-undelfs' (off by default) Support for ext2 undelete filesystem. On systems that use the ext2 or ext3 file system and have the libext2fs library available, this option adds support for recovering deleted files (the undel virtual file system). Screen library: - - - - - - - - You may also tell configure which screen library you want to use with the Midnight Commander. The configure script will use S-Lang as default, and prefers an already installed S-Lang library over the included one, but you can override this by using the following flag (please note that since S-Lang is default, it is tested better than ncurses): `--with-screen={slang|ncurses}' Choose the library used to manage interaction with the terminal. `slang' means S-Lang library already installed on the system, `ncurses' means ncurses library already installed on the system. The S-Lang library is used by default if found. `--with-ncurses-includes=[DIR]' Set path to ncurses includes [default=/usr/include]; make sense only if --with-screen=ncurses is used; for /usr/local/include/ncurses specify /usr/local/include. `--with-ncurses-libs=[DIR]' Set path to ncurses library [default=/usr/lib]; make sense only if --with-screen=ncurses is used. On systems that require unusual options for compilation or linking that the package's `configure' script does not know about, you can give `configure' initial values for variables by placing them in the command line: ./configure CC='gcc -traditional' LIBS=-lposix 2. Type `make' to compile the package. 3. Type `make install' to install programs, data files, and the documentation. If you're on a GNU/Linux system, this will install the `cons.saver' utility, which allows the Midnight Commander to save and restore the console contents. This utility can be installed setuid root, but it's only needed on systems where users cannot access /dev/vcsaN, where N is the virtual console number, on which the uses is logged on. Obtaining related software -------------------------- glib ---- The only "hard" dependency of GNU Midnight Commander is glib. You can get glib from * https://download.gnome.org/sources/glib/ Minimal version of glib: 2.32.0 Recommended version: 2.32.x and higher. Newer versions may work, but haven't been tested. PCRE ---- Both PCRE and PCRE2 libraries are supported. You can get PCRE from * https://www.pcre.org Terminal database ----------------- There are many incomplete terminal databases out there, however, a complete terminfo is bundled with ncurses. (It is simple to generate the termcap database using the infocmp utility in ncurses). Some terminfo data are included with the mc distribution (lib/*.ti). Particularly linux, xterm and vt100. Use e.g. ''tic linux.ti'' to use them. If you want to run mc on xterm/color_xterm/ansi_xterm (not rxvt), then you might read lib/README.xterm for further information. Screen libraries ---------------- GNU Midnight Commander can use the included version of S-Lang, but you can get the latest version here: * https://www.jedsoft.org/slang/ Alternatively, you can use ncurses: * https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/announce.html Mouse support ------------- The general purpose mouse (gpm) daemon is available from * https://www.nico.schottelius.org/software/gpm/ Porting ------- Some less widespread UNIX systems like AIX or Solaris often come with their own implementations of make and relevant parts of the toolchain necessary to build mc. While autotools abstract a lot of platform specific issues, you might encounter unresolved problems while using the native toolchain. Often, GNU tools are shipped as a part of an additional software collection (/opt/freeware on AIX, or OpenCSW on Solaris). These tools are usually prefixed with the letter `g', e.g. `gmake' instead of `make'. If you are not really interested in building with the native toolchain, try to override tools causing problems like this: ./configure MAKE=gmake AR=gar gmake