More un-hardcoding

[bpt/mlt.git] / BUILDING

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System requirements
===================

Compiling the mlt tool requires a "working version" of SML/NJ. It's
best to use version 110.49 or later. Earlier versions have
incompatibilities, bugs, or both. You may have problems with any
version whatsoever, though, since this stuff uses some SML/NJ compiler
internals, and they may change often.


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Configuration
=============

Modify the parameters in settings and src/settings.sml as appropriate
for your system.

If it is possible for you to modify a file /etc/mlt.conf, then you
can edit this file to set various options related to locations of
important files on your file system. In particular, you may want to
set the 'compiler', 'lib', and 'sml' options (documented in the
manual) if you have SML/NJ installed somewhere besides /usr/local/sml
or the mlt src directory somewhere besides /usr/local/share/mlt/src.
If you can't modify /etc/mlt.conf, then you can change the first
variable definition in src/config.sml to a different path, or you can
leave it as is and provide all configuration in the local mlt.conf
file for each project.

You should also edit the paths in the simple install script in this
directory if you want to install system-wide binaries and scripts to
somewhere besides /usr/local/bin.

These changes may be made for you by a fancy configuration program in
a future release.


========
Building
========

All sources may be built by running the build script in this
directory. It does a clean re-build of all source files and stabilizes
all libraries produced. The build script is not appropriate for use
during development. Use the standard SML/NJ CM mechanisms if you are
changing the code and don't want to recompile everything each time.

[There is probably a better way to do this, but I haven't figured one
out yet.]