KVIrc Installation
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last modified = 06 Oct 98 by Szymon Stefanek
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

============
REQUIREMENTS
============

QT >= 1.40 (with development support!)  (www.troll.no)
	I don't know if KVIrc can run on older versions of the Qt library.
	If you succesfully compile with a qtlib<1.40 just let me know :)

KDE >= 1.0 (ftp.kde.org)
      Should work fine under the 1.0 preview releases too.

Once you have installed (AND CONFIGURED!) Qt and KDE you're ready to
install KVIrc. (Now it should be easy)
KVIrc is known to install correctly on well configured Linux systems.
Still don't know about Solaris etc...(let me know!)

=================
FAST INSTALLATION
=================
As usual:

./configure
make    
make install

Done. You can run kvirc now :)

==============================================
    IF YOU LIKE HACKING OR HAVE PROBLEMS:
         Installation step by step
==============================================

-Step 1 : run the configure script.
 
 % ./configure

 If you have problems here , your system is NOT
 setup properly (see 'COMMON PROBLEMS' section below.)
 The script will check for you system state , look for
 a suitable compiler, look for the requested libraries
 and header files.

-Step 2 (Optional) : Hack the makefiles.

 Edit the 'Makefile' in the kvirc subdirectory.
 The most common option that you may want to edit is CXXFLAGS.
 -By default the make process will build a 'debug' executable ,
  with many informations for gdb: the GNU debugger.
  It is useful if you discover a reproducible bug.
  If you are not interested with hunting the bugs,
  you can hack the Makefile (in the kvirc subdirectory) to
  remove the -g option from CXXFLAGS.
  It will drastically redice the executable size, (From ~7.5 M to ~1.5 M)
  and speed up the compilation.
  If you don't want to do it now , you will be able to remove
  the debug symbols later , using the strip program.
 -You can also substitute the -O2 flag with -O3.
  It will enable functions inlining and some other
  optimization stuff.

-Step 3 : Build the executable file.
 
 % make

 The make command must be issued from the TOPLEVEL distribution
 directory.
 KVIrc may give some warnings with network functions during the
 compilation...Just ignore it. You may also see some warnings in the Qt/Kde
 include files when you compile KVirc with -pedantic enabled, Ignore it again.

-Step 4 (Optional) : Strip the debugging symbols

 If you've removed the -g option at Step 3 you can jump to Step 5.
 If you wish to reduse memory usage , and are not interested in hunting bugs
 you can strip the debugging symbols from the executable file.

 % strip -g kvirc

 This will remove the debug symbols only.
 If you want to remove ALL symbols use:

 % strip -s kvirc
 
 Please refer to the strip man page for more options.

-Step 5 : Installation

 If you have a previous distribution of KVIrc installed, it may be a good
 idea to remove the old configuration file from $HOME/.kde/share/config (or
 $HOME/kde/share/config) before typing make install.
 (KVirc may hang trying to read the old configuration files.)
 You SHOULD also remove (or rename) the kvirc_home directory that
 will be recreated with the new settings the first time that kvirc runs.
 Make also sure that you're ot mixing the distributions when compiling.
 If you want to run KVIrc as user (not root) you should make sure that you
 have the read access to $KDEDIR/share/apps directory.
 If you can't install as user for some reason , kvirc will work correctly,
 but if you want to use the default configuration files.
 Now you can type:

 % make install

 If the installation fails for some reason:
 KVirc binaries will be installed to $KDEDIR/bin , so make sure that this is
 on your path, and you have the right permissions to copy files there.
 If for some reason you are not able to copy files there ,copy kvirc and
 kvidns executables in a directory  that is in your path. In this case you will
 need to reproduce manually the kvirc configuration directory in
 $KDEDIR/share/apps/kvirc : below you have a 'ls' output of that directory tree
 , and the things that must be copied there.

 ls -l $KDEDIR/share/apps/kvirc
 total 12
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Ascii
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Audio
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Config
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Images
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Incoming
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Logs
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Misc
 drwxr-xr-x   6 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Scripts
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Translation
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         2048 Sep 12 16:41 pics

 the Audio subdir should contain:
 -rw-r--r--   1 root     root        37156 Sep 12 16:41 default.wav    

 the Scripts subdir should contain:
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Ascii
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Audio
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Images
 drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root         1024 Sep 12 16:41 Misc

 the pics dir should contain all the files that are in kvirc/pics distribution
 directory. 

====================
KVirc home directory
====================

KVirc needs an application home directory to store its configuration files.
You will be prompted to select a path where to create that directory.
The default is $HOME/.kde/share/apps/.(If exists , otherwise $HOME).
KVirc will also give you the possibility to make a link to that directory on the desktop.
You may have problems if your kde enviroiment is running as a different user than
the one that is actually executing kvirc....(Many users don't have $HOME/Desktop at all).
However if the link fails , nothing dangerous will happen.


================
COMMON PROBLEMS:
================

If you are reading here you probably have a problem.
Well,the first (stupid) things to check are:

-$QTDIR MUST be configured correctly for your system (echo $QTDIR must give you
	the correct path to the qt directory (usually /usr/local/qt )
-$KDEDIR MUST be cofigured correctly (same as above)
-$QTDIR/lib must contain libqt.so.(VERSION)
-Your LD_LIBRARY_PATH should be configured properly.

-If you have problems with linkage suchas 'undefined reference to '_XSetLocale'
in libXt...please check that it is the correct libXt.
On many RedHat systems I've found an ld.so.conf that defines
the [usr]/i486-linux-libc5/lib libraries directory before the ...[usr]/X11R6/lib directory.
That causes gcc to link the wrong library version.
If it happens please place [usr]/X11R6/lib as the first entry in ld.so.conf and run ldconfig.

-Please check the FAQ text included , and if you can't find the solution there ,
look for the latest FAQ on www.kvirc.org.


=============================================================================================
SUPPORTED PLATFORMS:

This is an (incomplete) list of platforms on that kvirc has been succesfully
tested.
It will be enlarged with the results of the 'Survey' (take a look at that
file...)

COMPILERS:
gcc or egcs 1.0

PLATFORMS:
Digital UNIX V4.0B
Linux 2.0.*  (tested on kernels 2.1.12x,2.0.32,33,34-RedHat,Debian,Slackware)
Solaris 2.5.* 2.6
Suse Linux 5.2

REPORTING BUGS:

Please use the form on www.kvirc.org to report bugs , 
or send a mail to kvirc@tin.it with subject : KVirc bug.
You can also subscribe the kvirc mailing list at
 
 http://www.eGroups.com/list/kvirc

You need to become a registered eGroups member before subscribing.
You can become a member by filling a small form
at http://www.eGroups.com.
