1Official FAQ for dbf 2==================== 3 4Author: Bjoern Berg, clergyman@gmx.de 5Date: 17/01/2003 6 7More information and an up-to-date FAQ you find on 8http://anubisnet.sf.net/support.php 9 10 11Topics: 12------- 13 14I. User-contributed questions 15II. Information for developers 16 17 18I. User-contributed questions 19----------------------------- 20 211) How to install dbf 22 23This document contains general installation instructions for dbf. 24Most of the information published here you also find in the added 25README of any software package you can download from an anubisnet 26server. 27 28Installation instruction for dbf 0.2 - 0.3.1 29 30These versions do not contain Makefiles or any other sort of 31installation script. Therefore you have to compile dbf yourself, using 32gcc or any other compiler, you have installed. We will describe, how 33to handle gcc. 34 35Use gcc as follows: 36 37Linux: 38gcc -o dbf dbf.c 39 40Windows: 41gcc -o dbf.exe dbf.c 42 43Copy the created binary to a place which is in your $PATH and execute 44dbf by invoking "dbf" at the command line. 45 46For newer versions have a look at the documents README and INSTALL 47delivered with the downloaded package. 48 49#### 50 512) Compiling on Windows 52 53This page describes how to compile dbf from the source with other 54compilers than gcc on Windows 55 56Compiling with Microsoft C/C++ Compiler 57 58The Microsoft C/C++ Compiler is delivered with Microsoft Visual Studio. If you 59have selected the Default installation, it should be found in 60C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Bin and is called "cl.exe". 61Run "cl \dbf.c" and dbf should compile fine. 62 63#### 64 653) Compiling on Linux 66 67Since version 0.3.2, dbf comes with a Makefile which helps you to easily 68compile and install dbf on any UN*X based system. In the following we will describe 69how to get a clean installation with dbf-packages less or more recent version 0.3.2. 70 71Versions before 0.3.2 72 73Unpack any source package to a directory called dbf, because otherwise the complete 74package would be extract to the current directory without a sub-directory for dbf. 75 76Now switch into the directory and type: 77gcc -o dbf dbf.c 78to compile dbf. If everything went fine, copy the binary to a directory in your PATH, 79e.g. /usr/local/bin, /usr/bin. 80 81Version 0.3.2 and higher 82 83Version 0.3.2 comes with a Makefile which makes compiling and installing much more easier. 84You can extract the archive to your current directory, because it will create its own 85sub-directory, called dbf-$VERSION. 86 87Switch into this directory and type 88make 89to build the binary. With "make clean" you can remove this built binary. To install the 90binary to the generic (prefix) path (/usr/local/bin) type 91make install 92With "make install" you can remove your complete installation. 93 94#### 95 964) I get silly output from dbf! 97 98You are trying to display or convert the content of a dBASE-file, but all you get is a mess. 99This can have several reasons: 100 101a) The codepage used in your dBASE-file is not yet supported with dbf. This concerns files 102using eastern european and asian encodings 103 104b) The file you want to convert is not dBASE-compliant. This could happen when the file 105was exported from StarOffice, Excel or MS Access into any kind of format of dBASE. 106 107c) Uwe Steinmann reported us, affecting version 0.3.2 and less, that on not intel-based 108architectures dbf produces mess. dbf is in its current version not yet endianness-save, 109which means that dbf expects the major byte at the beginning of a long or a short. We will 110try to fix this with the next release. 111 112#### 113 1145) SQL statements are not created properly. 115 116You are using a version of dbf equal or higher than 0.6 and SQL export does not do what you have 117expected?! Please note that SQL export is in an experimental stadium, so that we cannot guarantee 118for a working implementation. 119Please send a detailed report to clergyman@gmx.de and we will try to help you. 120 121######################################################################## 122 123II. Information for Developers 124------------------------------ 125 1261) G E N E R A L 127 128If you want to contribute to the dbf-project at anubisnet you can contact me, writing an 129email to clergyman@gmx.de. 130 131There is a lot to do and a structured release plan is available. What I need for the moment 132is someone who can build binary packages for platforms like AXP, SPARC, etc. For this 133platforms we need also developers and testers whose job will be to check if the current 134version is interoperabel and endianess-save (see point 4 of the user contributed FAQs). 135 136I also need someone who uses dbf daily and keep the documentation up to date if 137something changes. 138 139A good start to get familar with dbf and its current development status is to read the 140CHANGELOG and the README. 141 142I am very glad, when I get a feedback from developers or end-users. So don't hesitate 143and write me an email. Criticism is heavily desired. 144 145More information on how to contribute to dbf an anubisnet you find on the 146anubisnet website: http://anubisnet.sf.net/volunteer/index.php 147 148### 149 1502) P A C K A G E B U I L D I N G 151 1522.1) LINUX 153 154Building a binary package of dbf on Linux is very easy. The Makefile I have added to dbf 155has mechanisms to build automatically source or binary packages including the complete 156documentation coming with dbf. At the moment you are able to build packages for i386 (ELF), 157Alpha / RISC (AXP) and PPC: 158 159 a) Download the current stable source of dbf. 160 b) I assume that you want to use gcc to compile dbf, otherwise edit the Makefile 161 c) Now use one of the following commands to build a binary package: 162 - make elf-dist (i386, ELF) 163 - make axp-dist (AXP, Alpha, RISC) 164 - make ppc-dist (PPC, MAC) 165 NOTE: You have to rename the current source directory of dbf from "dbf-<version>" to 166 dbf. Otherwise the Makefile will cancel the action. 167 d) Send the ready binary package to clergyman@gmx.de 168 169 1702.2) WINDOWS 171 172A detailed and easy instruction how to build binary packages for Windows will follow soon. 173 174 1752.3) MacOS X 176 177A detailed and easy instruction how to build binary packages for MacOS X will follow soon. 178 179 180 181 182