README.GIT

INSTRUCTIONS FOR COMPILING AND INSTALLING NANO FROM GIT
=======================================================

The latest changes and fixes for GNU nano are available via git, but
building this needs a bit more care than the official tarballs.


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

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

- autoconf    (version >= 2.61)
- automake    (version >= 1.7)
- autopoint   (version >= 0.11.5)
- gettext     (version >= 0.11.5)
- git         (version >= 2.7.4)
- groff       (version >= 1.12)
- pkg-config  (version >= 0.22)
- texinfo     (version >= 4.0)
- gcc         (any version)
- make        (any version)

If you want UTF-8 support, you will also need libncursesw5-dev installed
(version >= 5.7), or libslang2-dev (version >= 2.0) if you use --with-slang.
If your system doesn't have 'snprintf' or 'vsnprintf' (which the configure
script will check for), you will also need glib-2.x installed.

These should all be available in your distro's package manager or software
center, or otherwise on any GNU mirror.


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

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

    $ 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.