INSTALL
=======
This version is only known to work on the following systems:

    Linux 3.x/4.x (i386, x86_64, debian-{7,8,9,10}, ubuntu-{14.04,16.04}, ...)
    Linux 2.6 (i386, x86_64, debian-5.0.4, ubuntu-10.04, fedora-13)
    Solaris 10 10/09 (i386, amd64)
    OpenSolaris 2009/06 (i386, amd64)
    OpenBSD 4.7 (i386, amd64), 6.6 (amd64)
    FreeBSD 8.0 (i386, amd64), 12.1 (amd64)
    NetBSD 5.0.2 (i386, amd64), 8.1 (amd64)
    MacOSX 10.{4,5,6,11,14} (ppc, i386, x86_64)
    kFreeBSD 20090729 (i386)
    GNU/Hurd (i386)

For these systems (or later), just run the "configure" script in the source
directory. It will run the appropriate script in the "conf" directory for
the current host. Perl and GNU make are required for building.

Note: There isn't a real configure script so you will no doubt encounter
problems on other systems. An ISO C and POSIX/XPG4 environment will help
greatly. If your system doesn't have snprintf(3), GNU getopt_long(3),
vsscanf(3), strcasecmp(3), strncasecmp(3), strlcpy(3) or strlcat(3),
uncomment the relevant lines in the libslack/config.h file to include them
in libslack.

If your system doesn't have POSIX 1003.2 compliant regex functions, or they
are buggy, either: install the GNU implementation,
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/regex/regex-0.12.tar.gz [290K]
(doesn't support internationalisation);
or install Henry Spencer's implementation,
ftp://ftp.zoo.toronto.edu/pub/regex.shar [157K].

If you really, really, really don't want the regular expression functions,
uncomment HAVE_REGEX_H in libslack/config.h to enable the rest of the str
module to be compiled.

If you have a linux-2.2.x system, you must have LinuxThreads-0.8 or
LinuxThreads-0.9 and the latest corresponding version of glibc.
If you have a linux-2.4.x system, you must have at least glibc-2.2.1
and glibc-linuxthreads-2.2.1. They are available from
http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/glibc/. Older versions can be used but
they have some very nasty bugs.

First, uninstall any previous version:

    libslack-config --uninstall

or:

    cd /usr/local/src/libslack-0.6
    make uninstall

To build and test:

    tar xzf libslack-0.7.tar.gz
    cd libslack-0.7
    ./configure # iff linux, openbsd, freebsd, netbsd, macosx, solaris, gnuhurd or kfreebsd
    make        # must be gnu make
    make test

To install libslack and its manpages (into /usr/local by default):

    make install

To install into somewhere other than /usr/local:

    make PREFIX=/opt/libslack install

To uninstall:

    make uninstall

For more details:

    make help

There is one manpage for each module in libslack (as well as a symlink for
each function). The module manpages are agent(3), coproc(3), daemon(3),
err(3), fio(3), hsort(3), lim(3), link(3), list(3), locker(3), map(3),
mem(3), msg(3), net(3), prog(3), prop(3), pseudo(3), sig(3) and str(3). If
necessary, the manpages getopt(3), snprintf(3) and vsscanf(3) are created as
well.

BINARY PACKAGES
===============
Binary packages are no longer available on libslack's website. The Makefile
contains rules for creating them for several systems (i.e. Debian, Fedora,
OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OSX/macOS, Solaris10) but they might need updating
and they might need to be changed to incorporate signing the package.

The rest of this section shows installation from binary packages if they are
created.

To install from the Fedora RPM binary package (into /usr by default):

    rpm -i libslack-0.7-1.x86_64.rpm # or
    rpm -i libslack-0.7-1.i686.rpm

To install from the OpenBSD binary package (into /usr/local by default):

    mv libslack-0.7-openbsd-amd64.tgz libslack-0.7.tgz # or
    mv libslack-0.7-openbsd-i386.tgz  libslack-0.7.tgz
    # then
    pkg_add libslack-0.7.tgz

To install from the FreeBSD binary package (into /usr/local by default):

    pkg_add libslack-0.7-freebsd-amd64.tbz # or
    pkg_add libslack-0.7-freebsd-i386.tbz

To install from the NetBSD binary package (into /usr/local by default):

    pkg_add libslack-0.7-netbsd-amd64.tgz # or
    pkg_add libslack-0.7-netbsd-i386.tgz

To install from the Mac OS X binary package (into /usr/local by default):

    cd /usr/local
    tar xzf /usr/local/src/libslack-0.7-macosx-universal.tar.gz # or
    tar xzf /usr/local/src/libslack-0.7-macosx-x86_64.tar.gz # or
    tar xzf /usr/local/src/libslack-0.7-macosx-i386.tar.gz # or
    tar xzf /usr/local/src/libslack-0.7-macosx-powerpc.tar.gz

To install from the Solaris10 binary package (into /usr/local by default):

    gunzip libslack-0.7-solaris-amd64.pkg.gz
    pkgadd -d libslack-0.7-solaris-amd64.pkg

or

    gunzip libslack-0.7-solaris-i386.pkg.gz
    pkgadd -d libslack-0.7-solaris-i386.pkg

REQUIREMENTS
============
Requires GNU make to compile.
Requires perl to run the scripts in the conf directory.
Requires perl to install per-function manpage links.
Requires an ISO C compiler like gcc to compile the source.
Requires pod2man (comes with perl) to make the manpages.
Requires pod2html (comes with perl) to make the html manpages.
Requires POSIX 1003.2 compliant regex functions. See INSTALL.
Requires libpthread. See INSTALL.

PLATFORM NOTES
==============
These platform notes are quite old and probably mostly irrelevant.

Redhat9
-------
Redhat 9 has some very disturbing bugs that affect libslack client
applications. If a program that links against libpthread calls fork(), and
the child process calls abort(), the parent process will also be killed. In
other words, Redhat9 behaves as though the two processes are merely two
threads in the same program. This was noticed when executing the tests for
the daemon and err modules. Calling the dump() function in a child process
killed the test program as well.

The other disturbing bug turned up in the tests for the net module. When
executing the net_expect() and net_send() functions, with the test program
being the server and a child process being the client, data written by the
server/parent process to the socket descriptor connected to the client/child
process never made it to the client. It appears as terminal output instead
and the client times out waiting for it. All other tests involving the
client/server functions worked as expected. It makes no sense.

I don't think that there is anything I can do to work around these bugs.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

Note: I have found one Redhat9 system where everything worked properly but
two others where they did not. You might get lucky.

Linux
-----
Linux 2.2 always returns 0.0.0.0 on getsockopt(IP_MULTICAST_IF) so
net_multicast_get_interface() always returns 0 under Linux 2.2. Linux 2.4
does not have this bug.

Make sure you have a recent glibc (at least 2.1.3) and libpthread (at least
0.8) (See INSTALL).

Linux 2.2 and 2.4 have a bug-like feature in poll(2). It always times out
10ms later than specified. Libslack corrects for this as best as it can (if
> 10ms -= 10ms) but it's not good enough when you need timers with a
granularity of 10ms. In this case, you have to use
agent_create_with_select() instead of agent_create() under Linux because
select() doesn't have this bug. However, scalable I/O is impossible with
select(). So, if you need timers with a granularity of 10ms *and* scalable
I/O, you need an agent that uses select() in one thread for the timers and
separate agents that use poll() in other threads for the I/O.

Solaris
-------
Solaris (at least 2.6 and 2.7) doesn't return the hardware address or index
of network interfaces from ioctl() with a SIOCGIFINDEX command argument.
Libslack fills in the index in net_interfaces().

UNIX domain datagram sockets aren't supported very nicely. An actual
filesystem entry is needed for the client and it must be unlinked after use.
It's also possible for a malicious local user to deny a client access to the
server. The solution is to always use UNIX domain stream sockets.

Solaris has an inadequate snprintf() function so libslack provides it's own
implementation. When configured for Solaris, this snprintf() function will
format exactly like the system's sprintf() function, even though it has
incorrect behaviour with respect to the ISO C standard. I thought this was
better than having thousands of module tests apparently "fail".

OpenBSD
-------
Has the same UNIX domain datagram socket problem as Solaris.

FreeBSD
-------
Has the same UNIX domain datagram socket problem as Solaris.
Can't lock fifos so fifo_open() can't guarantee a unique reader.

Mac OS X
--------
Probably has the same UNIX domain datagram problem as Solaris.

SWIG
----
SWIG generates wrappers to make C/C++ libraries accessible to various other
languages. The supported languages include Guile, Java, Perl, PHP, Python,
Ruby, Tcl and more.

To generate the SWIG input file for libslack, install libslack and then
(from the libslack source directory):

    make slack.swig

Use this SWIG file to generate wrappers for the languages of your choice.

Note: The C code that SWIG generates (slack_wrap.c) will contain a line that
includes lib.h. This include *must* be moved to the top of the file. This is
necessary to set up the system headers properly. It will *not* compile
unless you do this.

And don't forget to use `libslack-config --cflags` when compiling it and
`libslack-config --libs` when linking it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    URL: http://libslack.org
    URL: http://raf.org/libslack
    GIT: https://github.com/raforg/libslack
    Date: 20201111
    Author: raf <raf@raf.org>

