-*- text -*- GNU Wget Installation Procedure =============================== 0. Introduction --------------- This document describes how to build Wget from source code on Unix-like systems. If you want to install a precompiled Wget, this document is not for you -- refer to the documentation provided by the distributors instead. If you already have Wget and want to learn how to use it, refer to Wget's Info documentation or man page which you should have received with your system. If you are using Windows (except for Cygwin), read windows/README instead. If you want to compile Wget from source code on a Unix-like system, read on. The preferred form of building Wget is to get a release archive and unpack it (which you have presumably done, since you are reading this). If you have obtained the source code via the Subversion repository, please follow the instructions in `README.checkout' before continuing. 1. Dependencies --------------- To build Wget, your system must support a Unix-like command-line development environment, including the text-processing utilities (sh, grep, awk, sed, etc.) and a functional C compiler. On some GNU/Linux systems, this means that you will need to install packages such as `gcc', `glibc-devel' (or `libc6-dev') and `make'. Most systems come with these packages preinstalled, but it doesn't hurt to check. If you have successfully compiled other software from source, you probably have them all. In addition to the C development environment, Wget can use a number of optional libraries to provide additional features, such as translated messages and support for "https" URLs. The "external" dependencies include: - OpenSSL -- for "https" URLs. - GNU gettext -- for translated messages. To be usable for building Wget, the listed libraries must be installed with their "development" header files. On GNU/Linux systems this typically means installing the corredponsing "lib-devel" or "lib-dev" package along with the package with "lib". 2. Configuration ---------------- Before compiling Wget, you need to "configure" it using the `configure' script provided with the distribution. Configuration serves two distinct purposes: it enables Wget's build system to inspect certain features of your operating system for more robust compilation, and it enables you to choose which features you want the resulting Wget to have. As is the case with most GNU software, Wget's configure script was generated with GNU Autoconf. If you're not familiar with Autoconf-generated scripts, read on. The most straightforward way to configure Wget is by running the configure script without any arguments. After running some compilation-related tests, it will create the Makefiles needed to build Wget. However, you may wish to customize Wget's configuration by providing arguments to `configure'. Wget's configure script accepts standard Autoconf arguments, the most important ones being: --help display a help message and exit --prefix=PREFIX install architecture-independent files in PREFIX (/usr/local by default) --bindir=DIR user executables in DIR (PREFIX/bin) --infodir=DIR info documentation in DIR [PREFIX/info] --mandir=DIR man documentation in DIR [PREFIX/man] For example, if you are not root and want to install Wget in subdirectories of your home directory, you can use: ./configure --prefix=$HOME In addition to the above generic options, Wget's configuration supports a number of options more or less specific to Wget. Options beginning with "--disable", such as `--disable-opie' or `--disable-ntlm', allow you to turn off certain built-in functionality you don't need in order to reduce the size of the executable. Options beginning with "--with" turning off autodetection and use of external software Wget can link with, such as the SSL libraries. Recognized "--enable" and "--with" options include: --without-ssl disable SSL autodetection (used for https support) --with-libssl-prefix=DIR search for libssl in DIR/lib --disable-opie disable support for opie or s/key FTP login --disable-digest disable support for HTTP digest authorization --disable-ntlm disable support for HTTP NTLM authorization --disable-debug disable support for debugging output --disable-nls do not use Native Language Support --disable-largefile omit support for large files --disable-ipv6 disable IPv6 support --disable-rpath do not hardcode runtime library paths You can inspect decisions made by configure by editing the generated Makefiles and the `src/config.h' include file. The defaults should work without intervention, but if you know what you are doing, editing the generated files before compilation is fine -- they will not be regenerated until you run configure again. `configure' will try to find a compiler in your PATH, defaulting to `gcc', but falling back to `cc' if the former is unavailable. This is a reasonable default on most Unix-like systems, but sometimes you might want to override it. The compiler choice is overridden by setting the `CC' environment variable to the desired compiler file name. For example, to force compilation with the Unix `cc' compiler, invoke configure like this: ./configure CC=cc This assumes that `cc' is in your path -- if it is not, simply use CC=/path/to/cc instead. Note that environment variables that affect configure can be set with the usual shell syntax `VAR=value ./configure' (assuming sh syntax), but can also be specified as arguments to configure, as shown above. The latter method, while being specific to configure, works unmodified in all shells. Environment variables that affect `configure' include: CFLAGS for C compiler flags, CPPFLAGS for C preprocessor flags, LDFLAGS for linker flags, and LIBS for libraries. Barring the use of --without-* flags, configure will try to autodetect external libraries needed by Wget, currently only the OpenSSL libraries. If they are installed in the system library directories or in the same prefix where you plan to install Wget, configure should be able to autodetect them. If they are installed elsewhere, use the `--with-libNAME' option to specify the root directory under which libraries reside in the `lib/' subdirectory and the corresponding header files reside in the `include/' subdirectory. For example, if the OpenSSL libraries are installed under the /usr/local/ssl prefix, use `--with-libssl=/usr/local/ssl'. Sometimes external libraries will be installed on the system, but the header files will be missing. This often happens on GNU/Linux if you forget to install the "-devel" or "-dev" package that corresponds to the library and that is typically *not* installed by default. In that case configure will not find the library and you will not be able to use the features provided by the library until you install the devel package and rerun configure. If you believe you have the necessary headers, but configure still fails to detect the library, please report it as a bug. 3. Compilation -------------- To compile GNU Wget after it has been configured, simply type make. Wget requires a compiler and standard library compliant with the 1990 ISO C standard, which includes the vast majority of compilation environments present on systems in use today. After the compilation a ready-to-use `wget' executable should reside in the src directory. At this point there is no formal test suite for testing the binary, but it should be easy enough to test whether the basic functionality works. 4. Installation --------------- Use `make install' to install GNU Wget to directories specified to configure. To install it in a system directory (which is the default), you will need to be root. The standard prefix is "/usr/local/", which can be changed using the `--prefix' configure option. The installation process will copy the wget binary to $PREFIX/bin, install the wget.info* info pages to $PREFIX/info, the generated manual page (where available) wget.1 to $PREFIX/man/man1, and the default config file to $PREFIX/etc, unless a config file already exists there. You can customize these directories either through the configuration process or making the necessary changes in the Makefile. To delete the files created by Wget installation, you can use `make uninstall'.