building and installation process for monotone
==============================================

1. prerequisites: 

  * hardware prerequisites:

    - g++ consumes a lot of memory building monotone, due to
      monotone's liberal use of C++ features. it may be possible to
      build on a system with 128mb of memory, but not pleasant. we are
      working on making this situation better.

  * software prerequisites:

    - autoconf.
    - automake.
    - gettext.
    - a supported C++ compiler: g++ 3.2 or later.
    - boost 1.33.0 or later: either an installed copy or an extracted
      tarball of its unbuilt sources somewhere in the file system are
      supported.
    - zlib 1.1.4 or later.
    - libiconv if the iconv() function is missing.

        on debian: 

           apt-get install autoconf
           apt-get install automake
           apt-get install gettext
           apt-get install libboost-dev
           apt-get install libz-dev
           apt-get install g++

        on fedora: 

           yum install autoconf
           yum install automake
           yum install gettext
           yum install boost-devel 
           yum install zlib-devel
           yum install gcc-c++

        on Windows (incomplete):

           libiconv (http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libiconv.htm)

        on other systems:

           check your system package repository, you may need to 
           build some of these from source. if your package repository
           does not contain the libraries, see:

                http://gcc.gnu.org/      for g++
                http://www.boost.org/    for boost

1.1 using boost in the build process:

  monotone uses the boost libraries in multiple parts of its code.
  fortunately, it only uses the so-called header-only libraries: these
  can be used very easily from other projects, as there is no need to
  build them by hand prior usage.

  therefore you can use an installed version of boost if shipped with your
  distribution but, if you do not want to mess with the Boost.Build build
  system (which is hard to deal with for beginners), you can simply use an
  extracted copy of the boost sources.  the two procedures are detailed
  below:

  * if your system already has the boost development libraries installed,
    you must tell the compiler where to find them.  their location will
    usually be somewhere under /usr/include.  try the following command:

      ls -d /usr/include/boost*

    if the command shows a single directory named 'boost', you do not have
    to take any extra steps.  configure will automatically find the
    necessary files.  instead, if the command shows a directory name of the
    form boost_1_33_1, boost-1.33.1 or similar, you will have to pass that
    to the configure script.  do so as follows:

      ./configure CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/include/boost-1.33.1"

    if no directories are shown, look for prebuilt boost packages for your
    system and install them.  if there aren't any, resort to the procedure
    described in the following point.

  * if you do not have boost already installed, and you cannot easily
    install it from prebuilt packages, fetch a copy of the boost sources
    from their site (see previous section) and unpack them somewhere in
    your system -- for example, your home directory.  once done, tell the
    configure script where the files are:

      ./configure CPPFLAGS="-I${HOME}/boost-1.33.1"

  it is important to note that, once monotone is built, you can get rid of
  all the boost sources or boost development packages from your system.
  the required header-only libraries will have been built into the final
  binary, which will not rely on any binary boost library.  in some sense,
  you can think of it as static linkage.

2. configuring monotone:

  * if there is no ./configure script in your source tree you'll need
    to create one before proceeding to the next step. one of the 
    following auto* commands should work:

        $ aclocal-1.9 && autoreconf --install
        $ AUTOMAKE=automake-1.9 ACLOCAL=aclocal-1.9 autoreconf --install

    If this fails early, check that you have gettext packages installed.

  * type "./configure" for a basic configuration of monotone.  several
    configuration options are available; type "configure --help" for a
    list of all of them. some special options are shown here:

     --enable-ipv6[=auto|no|yes]

       specify whether IPv6 support has to be enabled or disabled.  the
       default is to try automatic detection (auto) and use the guessed
       results.  however, you can force IPv6 detection by saying 'yes'
       or completely disable it using 'no'.

     --disable-nls

       build a version of monotone without support for local message
       catalogs. you might like to do this if you do not have a
       working installation of GNU gettext.

     --disable-large-file

       this will disable large file support from the builtin sqlite, to
       achieve maximum binary compatibility with old systems.

     --enable-pch

       this will enable precompiled headers, which should improve compile
       time. some versions of gcc have problems with this option, so
       try disabling it if you run into trouble.

3. building monotone

  * type "make". this should produce a mtn binary in your current
    directory. if not, please send a build log to 
    monotone-devel@nongnu.org with a description of the failure.

4. testing monotone

  * there is a "make check" target which you can try, if you'd like to
    confirm monotone's functionality on your system.
    Do not run "make check" as root (Unix)!  Doing so will cause the
    failure of some of the tests!
    Also, make sure your testing process has enough memory.  Experience
    has shown that some tests may fail "mysteriously" when there is too
    little memory.  A possible hint is that 128MB was too little on
    FreeBSD 6 on x86 while 256MB was enough.

    You might also like to try fetching monotone's sources from our
    monotone server. this process will transfer the complete development
    history (about 40 megabytes) to your database, and you will then
    be free to share it with others or make changes and submit them to
    us:

        mtn --db=mt.mtn db init

        mtn --db=mt.mtn pull monotone.ca "net.venge.monotone*"

        mtn --db=mt.mtn --branch=net.venge.monotone checkout monotone-sources

5. upgrading

  * if you have an existing monotone installation, you may need to
    perform some additional steps to migrate your data to the newest
    version; see the file UPGRADE for details.

