root/1.8.3/branches/gc/INSTALL

============================================================================
                   Installation Guide to PennMUSH 1.8.x
============================================================================
This file explains how to install PennMUSH. It comes in three parts:
  A. Important background
  B. Installation from source (recommended)
  C. Installation of precompiled binaries (only for Windows platforms)

If you are upgrading from a previous PennMUSH release, this is
probably not the file you want to start with. Read the UPGRADING file
first.

DISCLAIMER: Before attempting to run a MUD of any sort, you should
have some reasonable knowledge of UNIX and C.  If you do not, it is
_strongly_ suggested that you learn UNIX and C to some reasonable
level of competency before attempting to set up a MUSH.  (Note that
even people using the Windows ports are encouraged to know UNIX,
because that's the paradigm that PennMUSH was built with, and most
resources will be written with UNIX is mind.)

You may also want to take a look at the Managing PennMUSH book at
http://community.pennmush.org and at Javelin's Guide for PennMUSH
Gods, at http://javelin.pennmush.org/~alansz/guide.html or by ftp from
pennmush.org, /pub/PennMUSH/Guide
============================================================================
 
A. Important background

Here's a quick picture of the organization of the MUSH directory tree.
The "src" directory contains C source code.  The "hdrs" directory
contains header files for the source code.  The files used by a
running MUSH are in the "game" directory, which includes
subdirectories "data" (current databases), "txt" (text files and
directories for building them), "log" (log files), and "save" (backup
databases).  Finally, the "hints" directory is used during the
installation process, the "po" directory holds translation message
files.

 pennmush--+-> src
           +-> hdrs 
           +-> game ------+-> data 
           |              |   
           |              +-> txt -------+-> nws 
           |              |              +-> evt 
           |              |              \-> hlp 
           |              |                  
           |              +-> log 
           |              \-> save 
           +-> hints 
           +-> po
           +-> utils 
           \-> win32 
               

PennMUSH has been tested on a fairly wide variety of machines and
operating systems including at least:

    GNU/Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD on many architectures
        Mac OS X
        Microsoft Windows
         
There's no real reason why PennMUSH shouldn't compile on any 32-bit or
better BSD, System V, or POSIX operating system.  Development is
primarily done on GNU/Linux and Mac OS X systems.

Mac OS 9 and earlier ("Classic"), and OS/2 are not supported.

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

B. Installation from source

     The quickstart version of the installation is:

1a. On win32 only, install proper tools or read win32/README*.
1b. On Unix systems, you need: A C compiler, perl, the minimum development
    packages required to compile programs (Linux distributions that don't
    come with gcc in the base install often need a package named glibc-dev)
2. Run ./configure or some variant
3. create options.h, or make update
4. make install
5. possibly make customize
6. Read game/README and follow those instructions

     Here's the process in detail:

1. If you're running on win32, read one of the win32/README* files
   for information on how to compile with various compilers.

2. On Unix systems, unpack the code and:
        % cd pennmush
    % ./configure 

   Useful arguments to configure:
       a. --with-mysql=/path/to/mysql_config: Use if configure can't
          find mysql_config in your normal path and you want SQL support.
       b. --disable-nls: Turn off translation support if you don't need it.
       c. --help: See all options.       

       Environment variables to customize search paths:
       CPPFLAGS=-I/path/to/extra/headers
       LDFLAGS=-L/path/to/extra/libraries
       CFLAGS=-Optimation and -Warning options.

       VAR=arg ... ./configure

       See hints/your-os.txt if present for more details and system-specific
       help, and README.SQL for help with detecting a SQL server.
    

3. EITHER:

Type 'make update', and answer all the questions about which MUSH
options you want.

OR

Copy options.h.dist to options.h. Note that these files stay in the
pennmush directory.

Edit the file. It's liberally commented. 

Also, cp game/mushcnf.dst to game/mush.cnf and edit. 


You should not need to change any of the other header files.

4. Do a "make install". This will build all the necessary files, and
set up some symbolic links for the restart script.  You will probably
receive a few compilation warnings, which can generally be ignored.

5. If you plan to run multiple MUSHes, you may want to do a "make
customize" which will run a script to help set up a separate
customized game subdirectory for each MUSH (run it once per MUSH you
plan to run).  Files in these subdirectories will already be
customized in many ways, so what follows may be slightly different. :)
This is probably broken.

6. Read game/README and follow those instructions. 

A final thing you may want to think about is compiling announce.c or
portmsg.c. These are port announcers; if your MUSH ever goes down, you
can set one up, and a message will be given to a person attempting to
connect to that port.  Read that file for details. It is not an
official MUSH piece of code; rather, it is a freely distributable
program available via anonymous FTP that is included in this code
because it happens to be fairly useful.  Javelin suggests using
portmsg - it appears to be more stable.

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

C. Installation of precompiled binaries (only for Windows platforms)

A pre-built binary is frequently available for win32 users who don't
want to customize their MUSH server, and don't feel like compiling it
themselves.  This binary distribution may not contain the src, hdrs,
or hints directories and may be missing several key files (like
Configure) from the pennmush directory.  It does include the options.h
that it was built with, as an aid to those who decide later that they
want to customize the server; they are useful as a baseline to work
from.

Using the pre-built binary is fairly simple; adjust your configuration
file as in game/README, then go to the game directory and run
PennMUSH.exe (you may need to use PennMUSH /run or PennMUSH /start).
Alternately, if you want the MUSH to automatically start each time you
turn on your machine, you can install it as a system service by
running 'PennMUSH /install'.  PennMUSH can be removed from service
status via 'PennMUSH /remove'.