GNU Zile

GNU Zile is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL.

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.

INTRODUCTION

GNU Zile (Zile Implements Lua Editors) is a text editor development kit, so that you can (relatively) quickly develop your own ideal text editor without reinventing the wheel for many of the common algorithms and structures needed to do so.

It comes with an example implementation of a lightweight Emacs clone, called Zemacs. Every Emacs user should feel at home with Zemacs. Zemacs is aimed at small footprint systems and quick editing sessions (it starts up and shuts down instantly).

Zile and Zemacs are written in Lua 5.2 using POSIX APIs, and hence requires a Lua 5.2 runtime and a few additional Lua modules:

Lua-stdlib
lrexlib the rex_gnu module must be built
luaposix the curses module must be built
alien

For exact version dependencies, see require_version statments in bin/zemacs. These are most easily installed using LuaRocks.

Source Layout

See file AUTHORS for the names of maintainers past and present.
See file COPYING for copying conditions.
See file FAQ for a selection of a Frequently Answered Questions.
See file INSTALL for generic compilation and installation instructions.
See file NEWS for a list of major changes in each Zile release.
See file THANKS for a list of important contributors.

The rest of the files in the top-level directory are part of the Autotools build system used to compile and install Zile and Zemacs.

Directory build-aux contains helper scripts used to build Zile.
Directory doc contains files used to create Zile's documentation.
Directory m4 contains a mixture of gnulib supplied and Zile- specific macros for rebuilding the `configure' script.
Directory lib contains the source code used to build Zile, and the other editors that use it.

Web Pages

There is a GNU Zile home page with information about Zile.
GNU Zile development is co-ordinated from the Zile project page at GNU Savannah.
GNU maintains an archive of past releases. This is a mirror for faster downloads and to reduce stress on the main GNU machine.

Mailing Lists

Questions, comments and requests should be sent to the Zile users list.

See REPORTING BUGS below for the bug reporting mailing list address.

OBTAINING THE LATEST SOURCES

If you are just building GNU Zile from an official release, you should not normally need to run ./bootstrap or autoreconf; just go ahead and start with ./configure.

If you are trying to build GNU Zile from the development sources, ./configure will not work until the ./bootstrap script has completed successfully.

Official Release

We archive compressed tarballs of all recent GNU Zile releases.

Additionally, we sometimes upload compressed tarballs of unstable prereleases.

Official tarballs are supplied with a GnuPG detached signature file so that you can verify that the corresponding tarball is still the same file that was released by the owner of its GPG key ID. First, be sure to download both the .sig file and the corresponding release:

wget http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/zile/zile-2.3.24.tar.gz
wget http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/zile/zile-2.3.24.tar.gz.sig

then run a command like this:

gpg --verify zile-2.3.24.tar.gz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key, then run this command to import it:

gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 80EE4A00

and then rerun the gpg --verify command.

Generic instructions for how to build GNU Zile from a release tarball are contained in the file INSTALL.

If you are missing any of the prerequisite libraries needed to successfully build GNU Zile, the configure script will abort itself and tell you right away.

Development Sources

Zile development sources are maintained at the GNU Savannah git server. You can fetch a read-only copy with either:

git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/zile.git

or using the CVS pserver protocol:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@pserver.git.sv.gnu.org:/srv/git/zile.git \
    co -d zile HEAD

If you are behind a firewall that blocks the git protocol, you can force git to transparently rewrite all savannah references to use http:

git config --global url.http://git.sv.gnu.org/r/.insteadof \
    git://git.sv.gnu.org/

When you are building GNU Zile from a git checkout, you first need to run the bootstrap script to generate various files that are shipped in release tarballs, but not checked in to git.

Normally, you just need to run ./bootstrap, and it will either get everything ready so that you can then run ./configure as would for a release tarball, or else tell you if your machine is missing some packages that it needs in order to do that.

REPORTING BUGS

If this distribution doesn't work for you, before you report the problem, please try upgrading to the latest released version first, to see whether your issue has been fixed already. If you can, please also check whether the latest development sources for the next release still exhibit the problem (see OBTAINING THE LATEST SOURCES above).

Please send bug reports, feature requests and patches to the [bug mailing list], preferably, file them directly in the relevant tracker at GNU Savannah.

When you are ready to submit a report, first, please read this.

Zile has a suite of Lisp tests in the tests directory of the source distribution, which you can run with:

make check

If, when you report a bug, you can create a similar test that demonstrates it, the maintainers will be most grateful, and it will prevent them from accidentally reintroducing the bug in a subsequent release.

shanipribadi / zile