Installing UUDeview for Unix

The Nice and Friendly Decoder

The first step, of course, is to get a copy of the source code to your hard disk. If you have not already done so, go back to the UUDeview home page at http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/ and download a copy.

UUDeview for Unix is available in two flavors, and there are separate installation instructions for both.

Installation Instructions for the .tar.gz Version

There are four steps in order to install UUDeview for Unix.

  1. Extraction of the source files.
  2. Configuration.
  3. Compilation.
  4. Installation.
If you're too lazy to type in all these commands yourself, you might want to download the Self-Installing Archive (go back to the previous page in order to download it). With that version, all you have to do is download ... and execute it!

Extraction

As Unix user, you should be familiar with the utilities gunzip and tar (if not, ask a friend). This step is pretty simple and straightforward. First, uncompress the source code, then unpack the archive using the two commands 
        gunzip uudeview-n.tar.gz
        tar xvf uudeview-n.tar
Insert UUDeview's current version number for n. If you get any errors here, the archive you've downloaded was probably corrupt.

Otherwise, you should see a new subdirectory with plenty of files within it. Change to this subdirectory now, using 

        cd uudeview-n

Configuration

UUDeview comes with an autoconf configuration script, which will usually set all the necessary options for your system automatically. You can invoke this script by entering 
        ./configure
However, there are some options this script can't guess, which you might have to set manually by passing parameters to the configuration script. You can receive a complete list of options with the --help parameter. Don't be overwhelmed by them, usually you won't need one of them. Here's a description of the more important options:
--prefix=DIR
Sets the base path where the binaries and manual pages will be installed to. Biaries will go to DIR/bin, and manuals to DIR/man. The default location is /usr/local. If you just want to keep the files in your own directories, use --prefix=$HOME.
You can also set the binary and manual paths separately using --bindir and --mandir.

--enable-tcl=DIR
Use this option if you have Tcl installed in a non-standard location. We will need the Tcl include file <tcl.h> in DIR/include and the Tcl library libtcl*.a in DIR/lib.

--enable-tk=DIR
Same for your Tk installation.

--disable-tcl
Use if you don't want support for the Tcl/Tk extensions. The frontend will not be built or installed.

--disable-manuals
If you don't want to the manual pages to be installed.

--enable-sendmail=PROG
Use PROG to mail messages to the internet. The program is given a list of white-space separated recipients on the command line and is fed the mail message, including headers, via standard input. One use of this option is to define a program doing certain preprocessing on the message before handing it over to the mail system.
If this option is not used, the configuration script does try to locate certain common mail agents by itself, with sendmail being the first choice.
You can also use --disable-sendmail to disable the mail sending facility altogether.

--enable-inews=PROG
Use PROG to post articles to the usenet. The program is given the parameter "-h" on the command line and is fed the article, including headers, via standard input. (The -h option usually instructs inews to honor the message's headers.) One use of this option is to define a program doing certain preprocessing on the article before handing it over to the news system.
If this option is not used, the configuration script tries to locate the inews program, or configures itself to compile and use the replacement mini-inews.
You can also use --disable-inews to disable the message posting facility altogether.

--disable-minews
If there's no news system installed on your site, a replacement inews, which is capable of posting files to a newsgroup, will be installed. Use this option if you don't want this program to be installed, or if it fails to compile (it's not quite as portable as the rest of the code).

--enable-posting=server
If using our replacement inews, we must have the address of a server we can route our postings to. With this option, you can specify the hostname or IP address of such a news serving host. You can always override this setting at runtime by setting the NNTPSERVER environment variable.

--enable-domain=domainname
If using our replacement inews, we need the name of a domain to identify ourselves. The configuration script knows of some means where to get your site's domain name from. If these tests fail, you should set the name with this parameter (otherwise, a bogus name will be configured). Note that the name of your domain does not include the hostname.

The configuration script is also sensitive to a couple of environment variables. The most important ones are
CC
The C compiler to use.

CPPFLAGS
Flags to pass to the C preprocessor.

CFLAGS
Flags to pass to the C compiler.

LDFLAGS
Flags to pass to the compiler when linking.

LIBS
Additional libraries.

You should have a look at the messages the run of ./configure generates. If you believe there's something wrong with them, you'll probably need one of the above options to correct it.

Compilation

This step should be a piece of cake. Just issue the following command: 
        make
This should compile everything. In the unlikely event of compiler errors, you will probably have to add some options on the call to ./configure above.

Installation

Installation should be just as simple as compilation. If you chose to install the programs in a system-wide directory (rather than your home directory), make sure you run the following command as root. 
        make install
This copies the binaries and manual pages to their final locations.

You should now test the installation by invoking uudeview and uuenview. Both should print a short description of their command-line options.

If it works, congratulations, you have successfully installed the UUDeview package. You can now go on and test whether mailing and posting from uuenview works, preferredly by emailing a file to yourself and posting to local test newsgroups.

Optionally, you may also try to use the compatibility features of both uudeview and uuenview by symlinking uuencode to uuenview and uudecode to uudeview. Called like that, both tools will try to mimic their predecessors' behaviour (but of couse being much smarter).

Installation Instructions for the SFX Version

You can start the installation process by running 

        sh uudeview-sfx-n.sh
Insert UUDeview's current version number for n.

The auto-installer will then prompt you for several installation options. Sensible defaults are provided, so that you can try to just hit return upon each prompt. These prompts are:

Installation Prefix
The base directory for installing UUDeview's files. Programs will be installed into the bin subdirectory, manual pages into the man subdirectory.

If you are running the script from a normal user account, the default will be to install UUDeview into your home directory. The programs will therefore be in $HOME/bin.

If you are running the script as superuser (root), the default installation prefix will be /usr/local

Do you want manual pages
You can choose to install manual pages (this is the default), or not to install them by entering "n".

Add Tcl support if possible
Add Tk support if possible
If Tcl/Tk is available, UUDeview will add support for the graphical frontend, xdeview. The default is to check whether Tcl/Tk is available in an appropriate version. You can disable this check (therefore disabling the frontent) by answering "n". On both prompts, you can also give directories where to look for the Tcl/Tk files.

Your domain
If you intend to post directly from UUEnview to usenet newsgroups, you should enter your domain name here, else users will not be able to reply to your postings.

After answering these questions, the auto-installer will prompt you before building and installing UUDeview, so that you can interrupt the process at any time.

Afterwards, you will have installed the UUDeview package successfully. You can now go on and test whether mailing and posting from uuenview works, preferredly by emailing a file to yourself and posting to local test newsgroups.

Frank Pilhofer <fp -AT- fpx.de> Back to the Homepage
Last modified: Wed Jun 6 20:33:04 2001