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This chapter explains some practical considerations, regarding the installation and compiler options that are needed in order to use this library.
Before you can use the library, it must be installed. First, you have to make sure all dependencies are installed. They are listed in the file ‘DEPENDENCIES’.
Then you can proceed to build and install the library, as described in the file ‘INSTALL’. For installation on Windows systems, please refer to the file ‘README.woe32’.
Let's denote as LIBUNISTRING_PREFIX the value of the ‘--prefix’
option that you passed to configure while installing this package.
If you didn't pass any ‘--prefix’ option, then the package is installed
in ‘/usr/local’.
Let's denote as LIBUNISTRING_INCLUDEDIR the directory where the
include files were installed. This is usually the same as
${LIBUNISTRING_PREFIX}/include. Except that if you passed an
‘--includedir’ option to configure, it is the value of that
option.
Let's further denote as LIBUNISTRING_LIBDIR the directory where
the library itself was installed. This is the value that you passed
with the ‘--libdir’ option to configure, or otherwise the
same as ${LIBUNISTRING_PREFIX}/lib. Recall that when building
in 64-bit mode on a 64-bit GNU/Linux system that supports executables
in either 64-bit mode or 32-bit mode, you should have used the option
--libdir=${LIBUNISTRING_PREFIX}/lib64.
So that the compiler finds the include files, you have to pass it the
option -I${LIBUNISTRING_INCLUDEDIR}.
So that the compiler finds the library during its linking pass, you have
to pass it the options -L${LIBUNISTRING_LIBDIR} -lunistring.
On some systems, in some configurations, you also have to pass options
needed for linking with libiconv. The autoconf macro
gl_LIBUNISTRING (see Autoconf macro) deals with this
particularity.
Most of the include files have been presented in the introduction, see Introduction, and subsequent detailed chapters.
Another include file is <unistring/version.h>. It contains the
version number of the libunistring library.
This constant contains the version of libunistring that is being used
at compile time. It encodes the major and minor parts of the version
number only. These parts are encoded in the form (major<<8) + minor.
This constant contains the version of libunistring that is being used
at run time. It encodes the major and minor parts of the version
number only. These parts are encoded in the form (major<<8) + minor.
It is possible that _libunistring_version is greater than
_LIBUNISTRING_VERSION. This can happen when you use
libunistring as a shared library, and a newer, binary
backward-compatible version has been installed after your program
that uses libunistring was installed.
GNU Gnulib provides an autoconf macro that tests for the availability
of libunistring. It is contained in the Gnulib module
‘libunistring’, see
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/MODULES.html#module=libunistring.
The macro is called gl_LIBUNISTRING. It searches for an installed
libunistring. If found, it sets and AC_SUBSTs HAVE_LIBUNISTRING=yes
and the LIBUNISTRING and LTLIBUNISTRING variables and augments
the CPPFLAGS variable, and defines the C macro
HAVE_LIBUNISTRING to 1. Otherwise, it sets and AC_SUBSTs
HAVE_LIBUNISTRING=no and LIBUNISTRING and LTLIBUNISTRING
to empty.
The complexities that gl_LIBUNISTRING deals with are the following:
libiconv, and the options for linking with libiconv must be
mentioned explicitly on the link command line.
libunistring, if installed, is not necessarily already in the
search path (CPPFLAGS for the include file search path,
LDFLAGS for the library search path).
libunistring, if installed, is not necessarily already in the
run time library search path. To avoid the need for setting an environment
variable like LD_LIBRARY_PATH, the macro adds the appropriate
run time search path options to the LIBUNISTRING variable. This works
on most systems.
If you encounter any problem, please don't hesitate to send a detailed
bug report to the bug-libunistring@gnu.org mailing list. You can
alternatively also use the bug tracker at the project page
https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/libunistring.
Please always include the version number of this library, and a short description of your operating system and compilation environment with corresponding version numbers.
For problems that appear while building and installing libunistring,
for which you don't find the remedy in the ‘INSTALL’ file, please include
a description of the options that you passed to the ‘configure’ script.
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