
		------------------------------------
		Installation of	XBase and DBD::XBase
		------------------------------------

To use the XBase.pm module, perl version 5.004 is required. To use
the DBD::XBase driver, you need a DBI module version 1.0 or higher.

Installation is the same as for any Perl module, so if you have some
obscure platform, check instructions that came with perl for that
platform -- I won't be able to help you because I probably do not use
your platform.

The generic way is: download the DBD-XBase-x.xxx.tar.gz, unpack it,
change to the DBD-XBase-x.xxx directory. Then do

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make test
	make install

You can also use the CPAN.pm module to do these steps for you

	$ perl -MCPAN -e shell
	cpan> install DBD::XBase

If you do not have root access on that machine and/or cannot install
into standard Perl library directories, you can specify alternate
location with

	$ perl Makefile.PL LIB=/your/directory \
		INSTALLMAN1DIR=/path/for/man1 \
		INSTALLMAN3DIR=/path/for/man3

instead of just perl Makefile.PL, and in your scripts do
				   
	use lib '/your/directory';
	use XBase;
or
	use lib '/your/directory';
	use DBI;

If you do not have make or you cannot run it (do you really want to
use Perl on that machine?), just copy the content of the
DBD-XBase-x.xxx/lib directory to wherever you want to have it. That
should work, even if it won't give you man pages and dbfdump/indexdump
scripts.

If you use a platform supported by ActiveState and run ActiveState
perl, you can use ppm to install the module. Please note that I have
no way of influencing what version of XBase.pm/DBD::XBase ActiveState
offers on their site -- contact them if you need newer version which
is only on CPAN. Cygwin does a good job of providing make on Windows
platform, so you can always install any needed version using the
generic approach described above.

If you have case insensitive filesystem, make sure you do not have an
old module named Xbase.pm installed -- remove it prior to using
XBase.pm, otherwise bad things will happen.


		------------------------------------
		Problems and bug reporting for XBase
		------------------------------------

If anything goes wrong when installing/make test, please send me
output of your installation messages and of

	$ make test TEST_VERBOSE=1

Each version of the module is tested on multiple systems and multiple
versions of perl before releasing but surely there might be situation
where something is corrupted on other platforms. So please, send me
reasonable output and it is a bug of XBase.pm/DBD::XBase, I'll try to
get it fixed.

If there are errors when actually using the module on your data,
please check first that it's really a XBase/DBD::XBase problem (for
example, did you FTP your files using binary mode?). If so, please
send me example of your script, the errstr messages you get and (if
possible) your data files that cause the problems and description
of what output you expected. If there is problem with writing the
data, send me the file before and after the action and also describe
what you expect and what you got. Add info about your OS, version of
Perl and other modules that might be relevant. You can of course
also send patches to actual bugs. I may respond with requests for
particular tests and actions to try on your machine.

Mention the word "XBase" in the Subject line, otherwise your post
will probably just slip through my xxx MB daily email load without
even being read. Please note that I'm _very_ busy, so try to help me
to help you by using the latest version of the module, minimalizing
the script code that causes you problems, providing me with tiny
sample datafile, anything that might be related. Detailed description
and small examples are the best.
	
For general Perl issues, use the comp.lang.perl.* newsgroups, for DBI
issues, look at http://dbi.perl.org/ or use dbi-users-help@perl.org.

Available:
	http://www.adelton.com/perl/DBD-XBase/ and from your favorite
	CPAN site in the authors/id/JANPAZ/ directory.

Copyright: (c) 1997--2011 Jan Pazdziora.
	All rights reserved. This package is free software; you can
	redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl
	itself.


