  This file gives a list of tools and libraries you used by the package. The
list isn't complete so please report any missing stuff.
  The list is oriented to systems using the GNU tools, not for Borland and
Miscrosoft environments.
  IMPORTANT! most Linux systems have the needed libraries installed but
rarely have the headers installed. They are provided in separated packages
intended for development (XXXX-dev).

TOOLS
=====

Binutils:
---------

  They include the linker and assembler. They must be the GNU versions.

Compiler:
---------

  The code was compiled with GCC 2.7.x, 2.8.x, 2.95.x, egcs 1.x, 3.x and may
be other versions. As I can't have systems with all of them I can't be sure
all of them can be currently used.
  I suggest gcc 2.8.1 or newer because 2.7.2 had some bugs in the C++ library
and its workaround could go away soon.
  I don't recommend gcc 2.9.6 nor egcs 1.x because these compilers have too
much bugs. Workarounds for these problems were created but as I don't have
these compilers new code could break. I recommend using a more stable
compiler.
  The gcc 2.95.x compilers gave me very good results.
  The code cleanly compiled with gcc 3.0, 3.1.x, 3.2.x and 3.3 but each
release of gcc 3.x likes to break something in the C++ stuff so be patient
and report any problems. One particular detail is that gcc 3.x is much more
slower than gcc 2.95.x when compiling C++ code. This is because the standard
C++ library now follows the ISO 1998 standard much more closely and hence
does a heavy use of templates, it looks like gcc 3.x performance to compile
such a code is really bad.
  At the moment of this writing (june 2003) my recommendation is gcc 2.95.4.

bzip2:
------

  Optionally (configuration option) used to create the tarball distributions.

fileutils:
----------

  They are rm, cp, mv, etc. and all UNIX systems have them. DJGPP users must
install them.

gettext:
--------

  Needed for internationalization. They aren't mandatory. Note: this is one
of those packages that likes to break its API.
  Note: Solaris provides its own implementation but it isn't supported.

gzip:
-----

  Used only to create the tarball distributions.

make:
-----

  Obviously mandatory. You must install GNU make, other make tools aren't
enough. The executable can be called gmake to avoid collisions with the
native make tool.

Perl:
-----

  The configuration script and others are Perl scripts, you'll need Perl
5.x. I strongly recommend using it even when the tarball and zip files
usually contains preconfigured sources that will compile out-of-the-box in
many systems.

RHIDE:
------

  RHIDE users can configure the package and the compile it using the RHIDE
projects. But you'll need a really new RHIDE, some times even from CVS. So I
no longer recommend using RHIDE unless you are going to debug or modify the
code.
  At the moment of this writing (june 2003) I use RHIDE 1.5 from CVS.

shellutils:
-----------

  They are pwd, uname, etc. and all UNIX systems have them. DJGPP users must
install them.

tar:
----

  Used only to create the tarball distributions.
  Note: not all tar implementations are usable, get GNU tar if you have
problems with it.

textutils:
----------

  They are cat, split, etc. and all UNIX systems have them. DJGPP users must
install them.


LIBRARIES
=========

gpm:
----

  It provides mouse functionality for the Linux console. I tested versions
1.13, 1.14, 1.17.x and 1.19.x.
  Note: binaries compiled with a version usually fails to work if you change
the gpm daemon version.

ncurses:
--------

  This is mandatory for UNIX systems where the X11 isn't available. But is
recommended for all UNIX systems because it is used when the terminal isn't
known. Versions 3.4 and newer were used. I remmember also testing with 4.2,
5.0, 5.2 and 5.3.
  Note: none of the listed versions compiles ok using gcc 3.3 and -Wall
because the headers contains chars as array indexes.

X libraries:
------------

  They are needed to create a UNIX application that can connect to an X
server and provide a good text emulation. It works even better than the
ncurses driver. That's a must for UNIX systems with X11 installed.
  CygWin also provides X11 under Win32 systems. This is just a curiosity.
When I tested it the performance was really poor but the test application
was functional.


