GnuCOBOL Files

			       OpenCOBOL
		       http://www.opencobol.org/
		http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/

OpenCOBOL is an open-source COBOL compiler, which translates COBOL
programs to C code and compiles it using a native C compiler.

This package contains the following subdirectories:

    cobc        COBOL compiler
    libcob      COBOL run-time library
    bin		COBOL driver program
    lib         Helper routines for missing OS functionality
    config      Configuration files
    po          International messages
    texi        Texinfo files
    tests       Test suite

All programs except those in lib and libcob are distributed under
the GNU General Public License.  See COPYING for details.

Programs in lib and libcob are distributed under the GNU Lesser
General Public License.  See COPYING.LIB for details.

See AUTHORS for the author of each file.

============
Requirements
============

  ***
     NOTE
	For all the following packages (required or optional),
	BOTH runtime AND development components are necessary.
  ***
  ***
     NOTE
	All the following packages are normally part of a Linux
	distribution. Cygwin distribution also has these as installable packages.
	Other operating systems also may have repositories for these.
	eg. MAC OS, CentOS and others all have package repositories.
	ALWAYS install the distribution packages when available !!
  ***

OpenCOBOL REQUIRES the following external library to be installed:

  o GNU MP (libgmp) 4.1.2 or later
    http://gmplib.org

    BOTH runtime AND development components required.

    libgmp is used to implement decimal arithmetic.

    GNU MP is distributed under GNU Lesser General Public License.


OpenCOBOL MAY require the following external library to be installed:

    ***
	NOTE - libltdl is NOT needed when installing on Linux,
	SUN Solaris, MAC OS, CentOS or Windows
        (including Cygwin, MingW and native windows).
	It is also NOT needed with later versions of AIX and HP-UX.
	(AIX >= 5.1 and HP-UX >= 11.1 are known to NOT require this).
	(Check if you have the "dlopen" function).
    ***

  o GNU Libtool (libltdl)
    http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/libtool.html

    libltdl is used to implement dynamic CALL statements.

    GNU Libtool is distributed under GNU Lesser General Public License.


The following libraries ARE required WHEN :

1) Indexed-Sequential file I/O (ISAM) is used

  o Berkeley DB (libdb) 4.1 or later
    http://www.oracle.com/
    http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/berkeley-db/db/index.html

    BOTH runtime AND development components required.

    libdb is used to implement indexed file I/O.

    Berkeley DB is distributed under Oracles own open-source license.
    Note that if you linked your software with Berkeley DB,
    you must distribute the source code of your software along with your
    software, or you have to pay royalty to Oracle.

2) SCREEN I/O is used or extended ACCEPT/DISPLAY is used

    BOTH runtime AND development components required.

    One of the following:

  o Ncurses (ncurses) 5.2 or later
    http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ncurses.html

    Ncurses is distributed under a BSD style license.

  o Unix curses

  o PDCurses (pdcurses) for MinGW/native windows ports
    http://pdcurses.sourceforge.net

============

============
Installation
============

** NOTE **
	Due to deficiencies in the tools used to prepare
	OpenCOBOL (autoconf/automake/libtool), it is
	NOT generally possible to use path names with
	spaces embedded within them (Mainly Cygwin/MingW/Windows ports).
 
** NOTE **
	The default installation path for OpenCOBOL is /usr/local.
	The installation path may be changed by specifying --prefix=<dir>
	as a parameter to the configure.
	Further parameters may be specified to affect
	include/library search paths.
	Execute ./configure --help for further details.

To generate/install OpenCOBOL :

**************************************

    ./configure
    make

 Here you may run
    make check
 to run a series of OpenCOBOL test programs (must do!)
 This MUST succeed - If not, please report.

    make install

** NOTE **
   You generally need super-user privileges to execute "make install".

** NOTE **
   On Linux systems, if you are installing for the
   -first- time, you may need to run "ldconfig" (as root).
   In fact, it does not hurt if you always do this.

** NOTE **
   On some Red Hat (Fedora) installations and
   possibly other Linux distros, /usr/local/lib
   is NOT automatically searched at runtime. 
   Edit /etc/ld.so.conf (or the equivalent file) and add
   /usr/local/lib to the file.
   Rerun "ldconfig".

You may optionally perform a series of COBOL85 tests.
See tests/cobol85/README
It is recommended that you perform this test.

**************************************

If you think you have a problem or just want to
record the make output, just redirect the output thus :
    make 1>mymake.log 2>&1
    make install 1>myinstall.log 2>&1

**************************************

You can get back to a clean installation status by running :
    make distclean

**************************************


============

The following is only interesting for advanced use.
A normal user should not have recourse to use these
options.

There are the following configure options:

  --with-db			Use Berkeley DB >= 4.1 (libdb) (ISAM handler)
				This is the default

  --without-db			Do not use Berkeley DB / any other ISAM handler
				You will not be able to use indexed I/O

  --with-dl			Use the system dynamic linker
				This is the default

  --without-dl			Use ltdl for dynamic program loading

  --with-patch-level=<n>	Set internal patch level to n (default 0)

  --with-varseq=<n>		Define the format for variable length sequential
				files. For values of 0, 1 and 2, four bytes are
				written preceding each record. The format of
				these four bytes for values of 0, 1, 2 is
				as follows :
				n = 0 (default)
					The first 2 bytes are the record length
					in big-endian order. This is compatible
					with mainframe. Bytes 3 and 4 are set
					to binary 0.
				n = 1
					The 4 bytes are the record length in
					big-endian order.
				n = 2
					The 4 bytes are the record length in
					native machine order (int).
					(This was previously the default)

				For the value of 3, two bytes are written
				preceding each record :
				n = 3
					The first 2 bytes are the record length
					in big-endian order. The record follows
					immediately after beginning at byte 3.

  --enable-debug		Add '-g' debug option to make

============

============
Development
============

If you wish to hack the OpenCOBOL source code, proceed
as follows.

You need to install the following extra packages with specified
minimum version before changing/building OpenCOBOL:

For compiling :
  o Bison 2.3
  o Flex 2.5.35

If you reconfigure and/or prepare a distribution
  o autoconf 2.63
  o automake 1.10.1
  o libtool 2.2.6
  o m4 1.4.12
  o gettext 0.17
  o texinfo 4.12
  o texlive (latest)

If you modify top-level configure.ac, Makefile.am in any directory,
or any of the standard OC tests then you will need to
run "autoreconf -I m4" to regenerate the necessary files.