This document contains instructions for using CVS to keep up-to-date with the latest 4Suite source code. There is no guarantee that this code will be free of bugs, or that it will even build, so please consider it to be of strictly "alpha" quality.

If you are going to be keeping up with 4Suite via CVS, then you should consider subscribing to the 4suite-dev mailing list. This is the mailing list on which the developers and other interested parties discuss issues pertaining to the development code, whereas the regular 4suite mailing list is mainly for users of release versions.

You may also want to know about the 4suite-checkins mailing list. This read-only list announces each commit to the CVS repository as it is made. At times, it can be high volume, and not very interesting reading, but its archives have proven useful for quickly locating diffs and patches.

The 4Suite project CVS repository can be browsed on the web at http://cvs.4suite.org/.

Before proceeding, please note that you need an ANSI/ISO C compiler in order to build 4Suite from source. This is not a problem for most Unix users, since gcc is now standard on most POSIX platforms, including most (if not all) Linux distributions, all of the BSDs, Mac OS X, and Cygwin.

Windows, however, does not come with a C compiler; if you are on this platform, you must provide your own. 4Suite's developers usually use Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0^®. Other compilers are supported, but not widely tested. Please report any difficulties to the mailing list. After you have downloaded the 4Suite source code, you can invoke setup.py --help-compilers to see what compilers are supported.

The development version of 4Suite will not work on versions of Python older than 2.2.1.

You have two options for obtaining the current 4Suite source code.

One option (the one we recommend) is to download the source code with a CVS client. For an end user, the main advantage to using a CVS client is that you only download the complete source code once. Thereafter, you can use the client to easily download and automatically apply patches for only the files that have changed since your last update.

The other option is to use anonymous FTP to get one of the nightly CVS snapshots. A snapshot is the complete source code in one standard .tar.gz file. A new snapshot is generated daily. The downside of getting a snapshot is that you have to download an entire snapshot each time you want to get an update, and it's difficult to tell what changed. Also, if you get a snapshot, you can't just switch to using a CVS client to get updates, because you need some special files that are created only the first time you get the code via a CVS client.

As mentioned above, you need a C compiler. You also need:

• An appropriate version of Python (2.2.1 or higher). If PyXML is not installed, your Python must have pyexpat and expat support compiled in. This is usually not a problem, but occasionally, people don't have it.

• An appropriate version of PyXML, if you want to use it (it's not a prerequisite). Acceptable PyXML versions are 0.7.1 or higher, with 0.8.2 or higher recommended. Avoid 0.8.1, which causes crashes. Also, if you are going to install PyXML, but haven't yet, it is recommended that you use the --without-xpath and --without-xslt options when running PyXML's setup.py.

Ensure that your C compiler executables are in your PATH and will run from the command line. The default compiler assumed by the installer is MS Visual C++, which uses the executable cl.exe. This compiler happens to require LIB and INCLUDE environment variables be set to point to MSVC's Lib and Include directories, respectively. Other compilers may have different requirements.

You can specify a different compiler by passing an appropriate --compiler=compilerID argument to 4Suite's setup.py. To see what other compilers are supported, change to the directory where the source code was downloaded, e.g. C:\dev\4Suite, and run python setup.py --help-compilers.

Once you have the compiler ready, all you have to do is this:

1. Ensure that you don't already have a 4ssd instance running.

2. Open a command shell, and change to the directory where the source code was downloaded, e.g. C:\dev\4Suite.

3. Run python setup.py install.

   If you got the source with a CVS client, then the installer will detect that you are in 'developer mode' due to the presence of CVS directories, and will turn off verbose output by default. This non-verbose output, which can be enforced by passing the -q flag to setup.py, will look like the following, if all goes well:

   running install
   running build
   running config
   running build_py
   running build_ext
   number.c
      Creating library build\temp.win32-2.2\Release\Ft.Lib.number\number.lib
      and object build\temp.win32-2.2\Release\Ft.Lib.number\number.exp
   escapequotes.c
      Creating library build\temp.win32-2.2\Release\Ft.Lib.EscapeQuotesc\EscapeQuotesc.lib
      and object build\temp.win32-2.2\Release\Ft.Lib.EscapeQuotesc\EscapeQuotesc.exp
   SNIP
   running build_scripts
   stubmain.c
   running build_tests
   running build_l10n
   running install_lib
   running install_scripts
   running install_data
   running install_sysconf
   running install_localstate
   running install_tests
   

   If in developer mode, in order to build with verbose output you'll want to append a -v flag to setup.py. That is, run python setup.py -v install.

   If you have trouble with the build or install, post to the 4suite or 4suite-dev mailing lists.

   4Suite on Windows will all go into one Ft directory. Typically, this will be placed in C:\Python21, C:\Python22\Lib\site-packages, or C:\Python23\Lib\site-packages, depending on the version of Python in use. You can specify a different base directory by passing the --root=otherDirectory option to the install command, e.g. python setup.py install --root=C:\dev\otherPython\Lib\site-packages.

4. The last thing to do is to set your PATH environment variable so that the 4Suite command-line tools can be run from anywhere. The place where you configure the path varies with each version of Windows, but is generally available through the System control panel. Right-click on My Computer on the desktop and choose Properties to jump straight to the control panel, and then navigate to the environment variable section from there.

   The path to add, as of 4Suite 1.0a4, is {PYTHONHOME}\Scripts. So for a typical Python 2.3 install, you would want to add C:\Python23\Scripts to your PATH. Note: This location is different than it was in all versions of 4Suite through 1.0a3. So if you are upgrading, remove the old {PYTHONHOME or site-packages}\Ft\Share\Bin directory from your PATH.

   Alternatively, you could just copy the files from the Scripts directory to another location that is already in your PATH.

C:\dev\4Suite>cd ..
C:\dev>python
Python 2.2.2 (#37, Oct 14 2002, 17:02:34) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from Ft.Xml import Domlette
>>> from Ft.Xml.Xslt import Processor
>>> print Processor
<module 'Ft.Xml.Xslt.Processor' from 'C:\Python22\Lib\site-packages\Ft\Xml\Xslt\Processor.pyc'>
>>>

C:\>cd \Python22\Share\4Suite\tests
C:\>python test.py -v
SNIP

The procedure for building from source on Unix is the same, no matter how the source was obtained, and no matter whether the source is for a release or developmental version.

Consult the Installing 4Suite on UNIX document to see how to do the build.

• 4Suite Project Page - Bug Reports, Feature Requests, Patches

• 4suite.org - Documentation, Downloads, News, CVS, Developer Resources

• 4Suite Users Mailing List - Peer & Developer Support

• 4Suite Announcement Mailing List - Infrequent Announcements about 4Suite

• Fourthought, Inc. - Commercial Development, Consulting & Support