1 Copyright (C) 2003-2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
4 are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
5 notice and this notice are preserved.
10 Contributed by Keith Marshall (keith.d.marshall@ntlworld.com)
16 This file provides recommendations for building a Win32 implementation of
17 GNU Groff, using the MinGW port of GCC for Microsoft (TM) Windows-32
18 platforms. It is intended to supplement the standard installation
19 instructions (see file INSTALL); it does not replace them.
21 You require both the MinGW implementation of GCC and its supporting MSYS
22 toolkit, which provides a Win-32 implementation of the GNU bash shell, and a
23 few other essential utilities; these may be obtained from
25 http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw
27 by following the appropriate download links, where they are available as
28 self-extracting executable installation packages. If installing both from
29 scratch, it is recommended that MinGW is installed first, as the MSYS
30 installer can then automatically set up the proper environment for running
33 Additionally, if you wish to compile groff with support for its HTML (and
34 XHTML) output capability, some additional tools are required as decribed in
35 the section PREREQUISITES FOR HTML OUTPUT later in this file.
38 BUILDING GROFF WITH MINGW
39 -------------------------
43 Before commencing this procedure, you should ensure that you are running the
44 MSYS shell in a *native* Win32 console window, and not in any window managed
45 by the rxvt emulator provided with MSYS; (this emulator suffers from various
46 known defects, which will prevent successful completion of a groff build).
50 Assuming that you have obtained the appropriate groff distribution, and that
51 you are already running an MSYS shell, then the configuration, compilation,
52 and installation of groff, using MinGW, is performed in much the same way as
53 it is described in the INSTALL file, which is provided with the groff
54 distribution. The installation steps are summarised below:
56 1. Change working directory to any suitable location where you may unpack
57 the groff distribution; you must be authorized for write access.
58 Approximately 30MB of free disk space are needed.
60 2. Unpack the groff distribution:
62 tar xzf <download-path>/groff-<version>.tar.gz
64 This creates a new sub-directory, groff-<version>, containing an image of
65 the groff source tree. You should now change directory, to make this
66 ./groff-<version> your working directory.
68 3. If you are intending to build groff with support for HTML (and XHTML)
69 output, then you must now ensure that the prerequisites described in the
70 later section PREREQUISITES FOR HTML OUTPUT are satisfied, before
71 proceeding to build groff; in particular, please ensure that all required
72 support programs are installed in the current PATH.
74 4. You are now ready to configure, build, and install groff. This is
75 accomplished using the conventional procedure, as described in the file
78 ./configure --prefix=<win32-install-path> ...
82 Please observe the syntax for the configure command, indicated above; the
83 default value for --prefix is not suitable for use with MinGW, so the
84 --prefix=<win32-install-path> option must be specified, where
85 <win32-install-path> is the chosen MS-Windows directory in which the
86 groff application files are to be installed (see the later section
87 entitled CHOOSING AN INSTALLATION PATH). Any other desired configuration
88 options may also be specified, as described in the standard groff
89 installation instructions.
91 5. After completing the above, groff should be successfully installed; the
92 build directory is no longer required; it may be simply deleted in its
93 entirety. Alternatively, you may choose to keep it, but to remove all
94 files which can be reproduced later, by repeating the configure, make and
95 make install steps; this is readily accomplished by the command
100 This completes the installation of groff; please read the final sections of
101 this file, GROFF RUNTIME ENVIRONMENT and CAVEATS AND BUGS, for advice on
102 setting up the runtime environment, and avoiding known runtime problems,
103 before running groff.
106 CHOOSING AN INSTALLATION PATH
107 -----------------------------
109 It may be noted that the above instructions indicate that the ./configure
110 command must be invoked with an argument specifying a preference for
111 --prefix=<win32-install-path>, whereas the standard groff installation
112 instructions indicate that this may be omitted, in which case it defaults to
115 In the case of building with MinGW, the default behaviour of configure is
116 not appropriate for the following reasons.
118 o The MSYS environment creates a virtual UNIX-like file system, with its
119 root mapped to the actual MS-Windows directory where MSYS itself is
120 installed; /usr is also mapped to this MSYS installation directory.
122 o All of the MSYS tools, and the MinGW implementation of GCC, refer to files
123 via this virtual file system representation; thus, if the
124 --prefix=<win32-install-path> is not specified when groff is configured,
125 `make install' causes groff to be installed in <MSYS-install-path>/local.
127 o groff needs to know its own installation path, so that it can locate its
128 own installed components. This information is compiled in, using the
129 exact form specified with the --prefix=<win32-install-path> option to
132 o Knowledge of the MSYS virtual file system is not imparted to groff; it
133 expects the compiled-in path to its components to be a fully qualified
134 MS-Windows path name (although UNIX-style slashes are permitted, and
135 preferred to the MS-Windows style backslashes, to demarcate the directory
136 hierarchy). Thus, when configuring groff, if
137 --prefix=<win32-install-path> is not correctly specified, then the
138 installed groff application looks for its components in /usr/local, and
139 most likely doesn't find them, because they are actually installed in
140 <MSYS-install-path>/local.
142 It is actually convenient, but by no means a requirement, to have groff
143 installed in the /usr/local directory of the MSYS virtual file system; this
144 makes it easy to invoke groff from the MSYS shell, since the virtual
145 /usr/local/bin is normally added automatically to the PATH (the default
146 PATH, as set in MSYS's /etc/profile), when MSYS is started.
148 In order to install groff into MSYS's /usr/local directory, it is necessary
149 to specify the fully qualified absolute MS-Windows path to this directory,
150 when configuring groff, i.e.
152 ./configure --prefix=<MSYS-install-path>/local ...
154 For example, on a system where MSYS is installed in the MS-Windows directory
155 D:\MSYS\1.0, the MSYS virtual path /usr/local resolves to the absolute
156 MS-Windows native path D:\MSYS\1.0\local (the /usr component of the MSYS
157 virtual path does not appear in the resolved absolute native path name since
158 MSYS maps this directly to the root of the MSYS virtual file system). Thus,
159 the --prefix option should be specified to configure as
161 ./configure --prefix=D:/MSYS/1.0/local ...
163 Note that the backslash characters, which appear in the native MS-Windows
164 form of the path name, are replaced by UNIX-style slashes in the argument to
165 configure; this is the preferred syntax.
167 Also note that the MS-Windows device designator (D: in this instance) is
168 prepended to the specified path, in the normal MS-Windows format, and that,
169 since upper and lower case distinctions are ignored in MS-Windows path
170 names, any combination of upper and lower case is acceptable.
173 PREREQUISITES FOR HTML OUTPUT
174 -----------------------------
176 If you intend to use groff for production of HTML or XHTML output, then
177 there are a few dependencies which must be satisfied. Ideally, these should
178 be resolved before attempting to configure and build groff, since the
179 configuration script does check them.
181 In order to produce HTML or XHTML output, you first require a working
182 implementation of Ghostscript; either the AFPL Ghostscript or the GNU
183 Ghostscript implementation for MS-Windows should be suitable, depending on
184 your licensing preference. It is highly recommended to use version 8.11
185 or higher due to bugs in older versions. These may be obtained, in the
186 form of self-installing binary packages, by following the download links
187 for the chosen licensing option, from
188 http://sourceforge.net/projects/ghostscript.
190 Please note that these packages install the Ghostscript interpreter required
191 by groff in the ./bin subdirectory of the Ghostscript installation
192 directory, with the name gswin32c.exe. However, groff expects this
193 interpreter to be located in the system PATH, with the name gs.exe. Thus,
194 to ensure that groff can correctly locate the Ghostscript interpreter, it is
195 recommended that the file gswin32c.exe should be copied from the Ghostscript
196 installation directory to the MSYS /usr/local/bin directory, where it should
197 be renamed to gs.exe.
199 In addition to a working Ghostscript interpreter, you also require several
200 image manipulation utilities, all of which may be scavenged from various
201 packages available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuwin32, and which
202 should be installed in the MSYS /usr/local/bin directory, or any other
203 suitable directory which is specified in the PATH. These additional
206 1. from the netpbm-<version>-bin.zip package:
214 2. from the libpng-<version>-bin.zip package:
218 3. from the zlib-<version>-bin.zip package:
220 zlib-1.dll, which must be renamed to zlib.dll
222 4. from the psutils-<version>-bin.zip package:
226 Note that it is not necessary to install the above four packages in their
227 entirety; of course, you may do so if you wish.
229 Further note that you are advised to avoid the netpbm-10.27 release from the
230 GnuWin32 download repository, as its pnmtopng.exe has been reported to fail
231 on even simple conversions, resulting in failure of the groff build process;
232 the earlier netpbm-10.18.4 has been found to work successfully. Also, you
233 may find it necessary to use libpng-1.2.7, rather than libpng-1.2.8, in
234 conjunction with this earlier release of netpbm.
237 GROFF RUNTIME ENVIRONMENT
238 -------------------------
240 The runtime environment, provided to groff by MSYS, is essentially the same
241 as would be provided under a UNIX or GNU/Linux operating system; thus, any
242 environment variables which may be used to customize the groff runtime
243 environment have similar effects under MSYS, as they would in UNIX or
244 GNU/Linux, with the exception that any variable specifying a path should
245 adopt the same syntax as a native MS-Windows PATH specification.
247 There is, however, one known problem which is associated with the
248 implementation of the MS-Windows file system, and the manner in which the
249 Microsoft runtime library (which is used by the MinGW implementation of GCC)
250 generates names for temporary files. This known problem arises when groff
251 is invoked with a current working directory which refers to a network share,
252 for which the user does not have write access in the root directory, and
253 there is no environment variable set to define a writeable location for
254 creating temporary files. When these conditions arise, groff fails with a
255 `permission denied' error, as soon as it tries to create any temporary file.
257 To specify the location for creating temporary files, the standard UNIX or
258 GNU/Linux implementation of groff provides the GROFF_TMPDIR or TMPDIR
259 environment variables, whereas MS-Windows applications generally use TMP or
260 TEMP; furthermore, the MS-Windows implementations of Ghostscript apparently
261 support the use of only TEMP or TMPDIR.
263 To avoid problems with creation of temporary files, it is recommended that
264 you ensure that both TMP and TEMP are defined, with identical values, to
265 point to a suitable location for creating temporary files; many MS-Windows
266 boxes have them set already, and groff has been adapted to honour them, when
267 built in accordance with the preceding instructions, using MinGW.
273 There are two known issues, observed when running groff in the MinGW/MSYS
274 environment, which would not affect groff in its native UNIX environment:
276 o Running groff with the working directory set to a subdirectory of a
277 network share, where the user does not have write permission in the root
278 directory of the share, causes groff to fail with a `permission denied'
279 exception, if the TMP environment variable is not appropriately defined;
280 it may also be necessary to define the TEMP environment variable, to
281 avoid a similar failure mode, when using the -Thtml or -Txhtml output
282 mode of groff. This problem is more fully discussed in the preceding
283 section, GROFF RUNTIME ENVIRONMENT.
285 o When running groff (or nroff) to process standard input, where the
286 standard input stream is obtained directly from the RXVT console provided
287 with MSYS, groff cannot detect the end-of-file condition for the standard
288 input stream, and hangs. This appears to be caused by a fault in the MSYS
289 implementation of RXVT; it may be worked around by either starting MSYS
290 without RXVT (see the comments in the MSYS.BAT startup script); in this
291 case standard input is terminated by typing <Ctrl-Z> followed by <RETURN>,
292 on a new input line. Alternatively, if you prefer to use MSYS with RXVT,
293 you can enter the interactive groff command in the form
297 in which case <Ctrl-D> terminates the standard input stream, in just the
298 same way it does on a UNIX system; the cat executable provided with MSYS
299 does seem to trap the end-of-file condition, and properly signals groff
300 that the input stream has terminated.