TITLE: Installation of Abiword LFS VERSION: any AUTHOR: J. E. Garrot, Sr SYNOPSIS: How to install Abiword from source. HINT: Abiword is quite easy to install, but there are a couple of gotcha's. Note that I did not install the gnome version. The URL for the sources is: http://www.abisource.com/downloads/Version-0.7.11/lf/ or, if you prefer: ftp://ftp.abisources.com/releases/0.7.1/src/lf The required files and approximate sizes (for Linux only :) (Actually, you have a choice. You can download .zip versions of the following. . .if you wish.) abi-0.7.11.tar.gz 4.4M abidistfiles-0.7.11.tar.gz 546k expat-0.7.11.tar.gz 65k libiconv-0.7.11.tar.gz 1.4M libpng-0.7.11.tar.gz 228k unixfonts-0.7.11.tar.gz 1.8M wv-0.7.11.tar.gz 1.1M zlib-0.7.11.tar.gz 168k You don't have to download anything that you already have, except xpat. It is important that the other files are untarred and unzipped in the same directory as abi-0.7.11 In addition, you must have XFree86 installed. I used 4.01, but 3.3.6 should work fine. Also gtk, glib, gdk, etc. Version 2.2 or higher. After downloading the necessary files, untar and unzip them in whatever directory you wish. (I build everything in /usr/src, but this is arbritrary.) BUILD_DIR=/usr/src (You don't have to set a shell variable. Just substitute the value whereever $BUILD_DIR occurs below.) Preparation: Now, because I know you didn't read the Developer's FAQ . . .:-) I will tell you how to build the shared version. (You didn't make static versions of everything, including XFree86, did you?) First, cd to $BUILD_DIR/abi-0.7.11/src/config/platforms Then edit the file linux.mk, changing "UNIX_CAN_BUILD_STATIC=1" to "UNIX_CAN_BUILD_STATIC=0". (Without the quotes, naturally :) No, you are not done yet. We now come to the reason I decided to write this little note. The following edit is not in the FAQ. cd to $BUILD_DIR/abi-0.7.11/src/config/require/unix and edit the Makefile. Change all occurances of "libz.a" to "libz.so". Change all occurances of "libpng.a" to "libpng.so". Again without the quotes in both cases. Compiling: You may wish to install the binaries somewhere else. INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local (See the comment to BUILD_DIR above.) cd $BUILD_DIR ln -s abi-0.7.11 abi cd abi Simple way: make make install Harder, but nicer: make distribution prefix=$INSTALL_DIR \ ABI_BUILD_VERSION=0.7.11 ABI_DIST_TARGET= where is one of 'tgz', 'rpm', 'deb', 'slp', 'pkg'. This will place the appropriate file(s) in abi/dist. They may then be installed in the normal manner. If you want to install in /usr/local, then leave out the prefix= argument. Well, since this is a hint, in abi/dist there is a file, abisuite-0.7.11-Linux_i386_shared.tar.gz. Untar this somewhere, enter the resulting abisuite-0.7.11-Linux_i386_shared directory and run install.sh. You should now be up and running. Try typing "abiword &". It should come up. (What? You didn't forget to put $INSTALL_DIR in your path, I hope.) Now save $BUILD_DIR/abi-0.7.11/dist/abisuite-0.7.11-Linux_i386_shared.tar.gz to whereever you save such things. (If you're not going to save it, why did you create it in the first place?) If you have any problems, the best place to air them is at lfs-apps@linuxfromscratch.org, so others can possibly benefit from the answers. However, I will certainly try to answer any questions on this install that are directed to me privately. Just remember, it may be a case of the blind leading the blind.