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) - groff (version >= 1.12) - texinfo (version >= 4.0) - git (version >= 2.7.4) - glib 2.x (if 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 be available on your 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 in the git repository using the Savannah project's bug tracker (https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?group=nano).