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Phil Shafer edited this page May 7, 2016 · 22 revisions

How to build libslax

Building libslax invokes four steps:

  • installing prerequisite software
  • downloading software
  • building libslax binaries
  • installing libslax

Prerequisites

libslax, like any complex piece of software, depends on a number of other software packages. On many systems, these packages are already installed, but some systems require manual installation of some prerequisites.

Prerequisites for Cygwin

  • Under category "Devel", install the packages:

    • make
    • gcc
    • bison
    • libxml2-devel

  • Under category "GNOME", install the package:

    • libxslt-devel

  • Under category "Web" or "Net", install the package:

    • libcurl-devel.

Prerequisites for Ubuntu

  • Install the following packages:
  • libxml2-dev
  • libxslt-dev
  • libcurl-dev (for UB14: libcurl4-openssl-dev)
  • bison
  • autoconf
  • libtool

Prerequisites for MACOSX

Modern macosx includes versions of libxml2, libxslt, and libcurl sufficient that you don't need to install the macports versions. But I install them anyway since macports tends to stay more current. If this DIY appeals to you:

  • Install MacPorts
  • Using MacPorts, install the rest of the prereqs:
    • "port install gmake autoconf libxml2 libxslt curl"
    • install either libedit or readline

URLs for DIY

libslax depends on the following software packages:

Retrieving the source code

[Note: for Solaris users, the "tar" command lacks the "-z" flag, so you'll need to substitute "gzip -dc file | tar xf -" instead of "tar -zxf file".]

You can retrieve the source for libslax in two ways:

A) Use a "distfile" for a specific release. We use github to maintain our releases. Visit github release page to see the list of releases. To download the latest, look for the release with the green "Latest release" button and the green "libslax-RELEASE.tar.gz" button under that section.

After downloading that release's distfile, untar it as follows:

tar -zxf libslax-RELEASE.tar.gz
cd libslax-RELEASE

B) Use the current build from github. This gives you the most recent source code, which might be less stable than a specific release. To build libslax from the git repo:

git clone https://github.com/Juniper/libslax.git
cd libslax

BE AWARE: The github repository does not contain the files generated by "autoreconf", with the notable exception of the "m4" directory. Since these files (depcomp, configure, missing, install-sh, etc) are generated files, we keep them out of the source code repository.

This means that if you download the a release distfile, these files will be ready and you'll just need to run "configure", but if you download the source code from svn, then you'll need to run "autoreconf" by hand. This step is done for you by the "setup.sh" script, described in the next section.

Building libslax

To build libslax, you'll need to set up the build, run the configure script, run the make command, and run the regression tests.

The following is a summary of the commands needed. These commands are explained in detail in the rest of this section.

sh bin/setup.sh
cd build
../configure
make
make test
sudo make install

In the following sections, I'll walk thru each of these steps with additional details and options, but the above directions should be all that's needed.

Setting up the build

[If you downloaded a distfile, you can skip this step.]

Run the "setup.sh" script to set up the build. This script runs the "autoreconf" command to generate the configure script and other generated files.

sh bin/setup.sh

Note: We're are currently using autoreconf version 2.69.

Running the configure Script

Configure (and autoconf in general) provides a means of building software in diverse environments. Our configure script supports a set of options that can be used to adjust to your operating environment. Use "configure --help" to view these options.

We use the "build" directory to keep object files and generated files away from the source tree.

To run the configure script, change into the build directory, and run the configure script. Add any required options to the "../configure" command line.

% cd build
% ../configure

Expect to see the configure script generate the following error:

/usr/bin/rm: cannot remove `libtoolT': No such file or directory

This error is harmless and can be safely ignored.

By default, libslax installs architecture-independent files, including extension library files, in the /usr/local directories. To specify an installation prefix other than /usr/local for all installation files, include the --prefix=prefix option and specify an alternate location. To install just the extension library files in a different, user-defined location, include the --with-extensions-dir=dir option and specify the location where the extension libraries will live.

% cd build
% ../configure [OPTION]... [VAR=VALUE]...

If you want to use the regression tests from libxslt, add the "--with-libxslt-tests=DIR" to the configure command:

../configure --with-libxslt-tests=~/work/libxslt-1.1.24

The --enable-debug command turns on SLAX_DEBUG, but debugging is enabled even without it. Use the "-d" option to "slaxproc" to get debug output.

libslax configure Options

The libslax-specific options are:

  --enable-warnings    Turn on compiler warnings
  --enable-debug    Turn on debugging
  --enable-readline    Enable support for GNU readline
  --enable-libedit    Enable support for libedit (BSD readline)
  --enable-printflike    Enable use of GCC __printflike attribute
 
  --with-libxslt-tests=DIR    Include the libxslt tests
  --with-libxml-prefix=PFX           Specify location of libxml config
  --with-libxml-include-prefix=PFX   Specify location of libxml headers
  --with-libxml-libs-prefix=PFX      Specify location of libxml libs
  --with-libxml-src=DIR              For libxml thats not installed yet (sets all three ab
ove)
  --with-libxslt-prefix=PFX           Specify location of libxslt config
  --with-libxslt-include-prefix=PFX   Specify location of libxslt headers
  --with-libxslt-libs-prefix=PFX      Specify location of libxslt libs
  --with-libxslt-src=DIR              For libxslt thats not installed yet (sets all three
above)
  --with-libcurl-prefix=PFX           Specify location of libcurl config
  --with-extensions-dir=DIR           Specify location of extension libraries

If these packages (libxml2, libxslt, curl) are installed normally, then their options are not needed.

Running the make command

Once the configure script is run, build the images using the make command:

% make

Running the Regression Tests

libslax includes a set of regression tests that can be run to ensure the software is working properly. These test are optional, but will help determine if there are any issues running libslax on your machine. To run the regression tests:

% make test

Installing libslax

Once the software is built, you'll need to install libslax using the "make install" command. If you are the root user, or the owner of the installation directory, simply issue the command:

% make install

If you are not the "root" user and are using the sudo package, use:

% sudo make install

Verify the installation by viewing the output of "slaxproc --version":

% slaxproc --version
libslax version 0.16.6
Using libxml 20900, libxslt 10128 and libexslt 817
slaxproc was compiled against libxml 20900, libxslt 10128 and libexslt 817
libxslt 10128 was compiled against libxml 20900
libexslt 817 was compiled against libxml 20900

Special note: xmlcatalog

libxml2, libxslt, and libslax do not ship with the DTDs for XHTML, which can be a massive concern for performance, given that 130 million requests are made per day to www.w3.org to retrieve them. This is annoying and fairly silly.

The fix is unfortunately not always simple.

  • For MacOSX, you need to install the "xhtml1" package from MacPorts, and then build you own catalog.
% port install xhtml1
  • For FreeBSD, the "xhtml-11" package is in the ports collection, and can be installed using the following commands:
% cd /usr/ports/textproc/xhtml-11
% sudo make installp

When you are done, your /etc/xml/catalog file should look like this (see doc/catalog.xml):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE catalog PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD Entity Resolution XML Catalog V1.0//EN" "http://w
ww.oasis-open.org/committees/entity/release/1.0/catalog.dtd">
<catalog xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:entity:xmlns:xml:catalog">

    <public publicId="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
            uri="file:///opt/local/share/xml/html/4/xhtml1-strict.dtd"/>
 
    <public publicId="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
            uri="file:///opt/local/share/xml/html/4/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"/>
 
    <system systemId="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"
            uri="file:///opt/local/share/xml/html/4/xhtml1-strict.dtd"/>
 
    <system systemId="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
            uri="file:///opt/local/share/xml/html/4/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"/>

    <delegateURI uriStartString="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD"
            catalog="file://opt/local/share/xml/html/4"/>

</catalog>

Additional Information

If you have trouble installing libslax or have an issue that needs addressed, please use the libslax mailing list or open an issue on the libslax github page.

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