First and foremost is its license: the Pine suite does not use the
GPL or a GPL-friendly license, and has unclear restrictions on
redistribution. Because of this, Pine and Pico are not included
- with many GNU/Linux distributions. Also, other features (like goto
- line number or search and replace) were unavailable until recently
- or require a command line flag. Yuck.
+ with many GNU/Linux distributions. Also, other features (like go
+ to line number or search and replace) were unavailable until
+ recently or require a command line flag. Yuck.
nano aims to solve these problems by emulating the functionality of
Pico as closely as possible while addressing the problems above and
perhaps providing other extra functionality.
The nano editor is now an official GNU package. For more
- information on GNU and the Free Software Foundation please see
+ information on GNU and the Free Software Foundation, please see
http://www.gnu.org.
How to compile and install nano
It's that simple. Use --prefix with configure to override the
default installation directory of /usr/local.
+
+ If you configured with the "--enable-nanorc" option, after
+ installation you might copy the doc/nanorc.sample to your home
+ directory, rename it to ".nanorc", and then edit it according to
+ your taste.
Web Page
INSTRUCTIONS TO COMPILE AND INSTALL NANO CVS VERSIONS
------------------------------------------------------
+=====================================================
GNU nano is available from CVS, but building this needs a bit more care
than the official stable and unstable tarballs.
+
+Prerequisites
+-------------
+
To successfully compile GNU nano from CVS, you'll need the following
packages:
- autoconf (version >= 2.54)
- automake (version >= 1.7)
-- gettext (version >= 0.11.5)
-- groff (version >= 1.12)
-- texinfo (version >= 4.0)
+- gettext (version >= 0.11.5)
+- groff (version >= 1.12)
+- texinfo (version >= 4.0)
- cvs
- ssh (with support for the SSH version 2 protocol)
-- glib 2.x (if your system doesn't have vsnprintf())
+- 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
+-------------------
+
First, you need to set up cvs to download the CVS tree using ssh. If
you're using a Bourne shell (e.g. bash or sh), do
-$ export CVS_RSH=ssh
+
+ $ export CVS_RSH=ssh
+
If you're using a C shell (e.g. tcsh or csh), do
-$ setenv CVS_RSH ssh
-After it's set up, use the following command to download the CVS tree:
-$ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/sources/nano checkout nano
+ $ setenv CVS_RSH ssh
+
+After that's set up, cd to your src directory and use the following
+command to download the CVS tree:
+
+ $ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/sources/nano checkout nano
If you want to download the stable CVS branch, add "-r nano_1_2_branch":
-$ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/sources/nano checkout -r nano_1_2_branch nano
-Once you have the sources in the "nano" directory, cd into it, and
-execute the "autogen.sh" script in the top directory. This will set up
-a configure script and Makefile.in, and you will be ready to compile
-with
-$ ./configure [--add-options-here] && make
+ $ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/sources/nano checkout -r nano_1_2_branch 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.
+
-Once it's done compiling,
-$ make install
-(as root) should put the required files in their respective directories.
+Problems?
+---------
Please submit any bugs in the CVS branch to nano-devel@gnu.org.