
NURSES LIBRARY
==============
Please note that the ncurses package -must- be installed for these utilities
to compile. To check for its existence, see if there is a directory named
/usr/include/ncurses on your system, if it exists then you have ncurses
(probably). If it does not exist check the file /usr/include/curses.h, if it
contains text like 'ncurses' or 'NCURSES' then you are probably OK too. If
both of these fail, you must get ncurses from your favourite internet site
or CD-ROM.

X11 LIBRARIES
=============
Some of the utilities are X11 based and therefore require the X11 libraries
and include files to be installed for them to be compiled. If you do not
have these installed, the configuration process will detect this and not
compile those utilities.

XFORMS LIBRARY
==============
Note also that for some of the hdlcutil packages to compile you will require
the XForms library version 0.84 installed. If you do not have this library
installed properly, then this is ok, but the tools that require this library
will not be compiled.


BUILDING
========
First type "make config" which runs a shell script which will determine the
layout of your system. If it is unable to proceed it will give an
informative error message as to why and exit. Then type "make" to create the
binaries, and "make install" to copy the binaries and manual pages into
their final resting places. Doing a "make installconf" will install the
default configuration files, this is not done automatically so as not to
overwrite existing files. A "make clean" will remove the .o files and any
editor backup files left hanging around, "make distclean" does the same as
"make clean" and in addition deletes the binaries too.

With this release the locations of the binaries, manual pages and the
configuration files has been made configurable (edit the top-level
Makefile to configure), with new defaults. There is no overlap between the
old and new locations, however leaving the old binaries untouched will
result in problems due to the order of the PATH variable may mean that the
newer versions may not be used. I have therefore created a shell script
called 'convax25' which will copy the old configuration files to the new
location, rename two of those files in the process, rename all the old
binaries to to NAME.old and delete the old manual pages. 

If you are an existing AX.25 Utilities user do:

edit the top-level Makefile as needed
make config
make
make install
make installconf

and if you are a new AX.25 Utilities user do:

make config
make
make install
make installconf

Then go into the directory ETC_DIR/ax25 and modify the configuration files you
find there.

The actual source code has been split into the directories apps, ax25, lib
and netrom. Most of the names are self evident, but a little explanation is
in order. The lib directory contains the configuration utilities and some
randomly useful utilities that may be of use to other people writing AX.25
and NET/ROM code for Linux, these utility routines are collected into a
library named axlib.a which is needed by programs in the other directories.

The netrom directory contains source that is specific to NET/ROM protocol
management. The ax25 directory contains code that is specific to AX.25
protocol management and is *needed* for any work with the kernel AX.25 code.
The apps directory is user level code that may be used with both AX.25 and
NET/ROM.

The rose directory contains source code that is specific to Rose protocol
management.

The z850util directory contains source code to utilities for configuring
and managing z850 based SCC cards.


