Beyond Linux® From Scratch (System V Edition) - Version r12.4-359

Chapter 9. General Libraries

libxml2-2.15.1

Introduction to libxml2

The libxml2 package contains libraries and utilities used for parsing XML files.

[Note]

Note

Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.

Package Information

Additional Downloads

libxml2 Dependencies

Recommended

ICU-77.1

Optional (for generating the documentation)

Doxygen-1.14.0 and libxslt-1.1.43

Installation of libxml2

First, remove an unnecessary call to git in meson.build: 

sed -i "/'git'/,+3d" meson.build

Install libxml2 by running the following commands: 

mkdir build &&
cd    build &&

meson setup ..           \
      --prefix=/usr      \
      -D history=enabled \
      -D icu=enabled     &&
ninja

If you wish to build and install the manual pages and the documentation, you should have libxslt-1.1.43 and Doxygen-1.14.0 installed, and run: 

sed -e "/^dir_doc/s/\$/ + '-' + meson.project_version()/" \
    -i ../meson.build                                     &&
meson configure -D docs=enabled                           &&
ninja

If you downloaded the test suite, issue the following command: 

tar xf ../../xmlts20130923.tar.gz -C ..

To test the results, issue: ninja test.

[Note]

Note

The tests use http://localhost/ to test parsing of external entities. If the machine where you run the tests serves as a web site, the tests may hang, depending on the content of the file served. It is therefore recommended to shut down the server during the tests, as the root user: 

/etc/init.d/httpd stop

Now, as the root user: 

ninja install

Command Explanations

-D history=enabled: This switch enables Readline support when running xmlcatalog or xmllint in shell mode.

-D icu=enabled: This switch enables support for ICU, which provides additional Unicode support. This is needed for some packages in BLFS, such as for QtWebEngine.

-D python=enabled: This switch enables the libxml2 Python bindings. Note that those bindings are deprecated due to flaws in the API design and they will be removed in libxml2-2.16.

Contents

Installed Programs: xml2-config, xmlcatalog, and xmllint
Installed Libraries: libxml2.so
Installed Directories: /usr/include/libxml2, /usr/lib/cmake/libxml2, and /usr/share/doc/libxml2-2.15.1,

Short Descriptions

xml2-config

determines the compile and linker flags that should be used to compile and link programs that use libxml2

xmlcatalog

is used to monitor and manipulate XML and SGML catalogs

xmllint

parses XML files and outputs reports (based upon options) to detect errors in XML coding

libxml2.so

provides functions for programs to parse files that use the XML format