smol/README.GIT

INSTRUCTIONS TO COMPILE AND INSTALL NANO GIT VERSIONS
=====================================================

The latest version of GNU nano is available via git, but building this needs
a bit more care than the official stable and unstable tarballs.


Prerequisites
-------------

To successfully compile GNU nano from the git repo, you'll need the following
packages:

- autoconf    (version >= 2.61)
- automake    (version >= 1.7)
- gettext     (version >= 0.11.5)
- git         (version >= 2.7.4)
- groff       (version >= 1.12)
- pkg-config  (version >= 0.22)
- texinfo     (version >= 4.0)
- glib 2.x    (in case your system doesn't have vsnprintf(), which the
               configure script will check for)
- make, gcc, and
- the normal development libraries (curses or slang, etc.)

These should all be available in your distro's package manager or software
center, or otherwise on any GNU mirror.  Note that you'll need a version of
curses or slang with wide character support if you want nano to use UTF-8.


Download the source
-------------------

To obtain the current nano development code (called 'master', or sometimes
'trunk'), use the following command.  It will create a copy of the files in
a subdirectory of your current working directory called 'nano':

    $ git clone git://git.savannah.gnu.org/nano.git nano


Generate the configure script
-----------------------------

Once you have the sources in the "nano" directory,

    $ cd nano
    $ ./autogen.sh

This will set up a configure script and a Makefile.in file.


Configure your build
--------------------

To configure your build, run the configure script from the nano source
directory:

    $ ./configure [--add-options-here]


Build and install
-----------------

From the nano source directory, build the code with:

    $ make

Then, once it's done compiling, run:

    $ make install

which should copy various files (i.e. the nano executable, the info and
man pages, and syntax highlighting pattern files) to their appropriate
directories.

If you're installing into the default install directory (/usr/local),
you'll need to run that "make install" command with root privileges.


Problems?
---------

Please submit any bugs you find in the code in git via the bug tracker
on Savannah (https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=nano).


Contributing something
----------------------

If you have a fix for a bug, or the code for a new or improved feature,
first create a branch off of master:

    $ git checkout -b somename

Then change the code so it does what you want, and commit it, with in the
commit message (after the one-line summary) a rationale for the change:

    $ git commit -as

Then create a patch (or patches):

    $ git format-patch master

Send that patch (or patches) to <nano-devel@gnu.org>, as an attachment
or with git send-email.