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mirror of https://git.tartarus.org/simon/putty.git synced 2025-01-08 08:58:00 +00:00
putty-source/README
Simon Tatham b7174344e6 README: clarify that you need to run vcvars32 first.
The source-code README file claims that you can start by just running
'cmake .'. But on Windows, that's not literally true. cmake will
expect to find a compiler on your path, and if it doesn't, will fail
to configure.

I'd always taken this for granted, assuming that anyone who was
reading this README and trying to compile PuTTY was already familiar
with how Windows compiler toolchains work, and only needed the part of
the instructions that were specific to PuTTY.

But of course there's no reason that should be true. PuTTY's primary
target audience, even from before it was called PuTTY, has been Unix
expats: people who like to do nearly everything on Unix but for some
reason have a Windows machine in front of them. Such a person might
very well be familiar with _Unix_ compilation, where the C compiler is
installed in /usr/bin and on your PATH already. And then if they want
to try to tweak PuTTY, that will be the first time they have to engage
with a Windows compiler!

So we do need to at least _say_ that the user needs to start by
running vcvars32.bat or one of its friends. Even if we don't give full
details of where to find it (because I've known it to change now and
then), we at least need to remind people to go and look for it.
2024-06-29 12:19:35 +01:00

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PuTTY source code README
========================
This is the README for the source code of PuTTY, a free Windows and
Unix Telnet and SSH client.
PuTTY is built using CMake <https://cmake.org/>. To compile in the
simplest way (on any of Linux, Windows or Mac), the general method is
to run these commands in the source directory:
cmake .
cmake --build .
These commands will expect to find a usable compile toolchain on your
path. So if you're building on Windows with MSVC, you'll need to make
sure that the MSVC compiler (cl.exe) is on your path, by running one
of the 'vcvars32.bat' setup scripts provided with the tools. Then the
cmake commands above should work.
To install in the simplest way on Linux or Mac:
cmake --build . --target install
On Unix, pterm would like to be setuid or setgid, as appropriate, to
permit it to write records of user logins to /var/run/utmp and
/var/log/wtmp. (Of course it will not use this privilege for
anything else, and in particular it will drop all privileges before
starting up complex subsystems like GTK.) The cmake install step
doesn't attempt to add these privileges, so if you want user login
recording to work, you should manually ch{own,grp} and chmod the
pterm binary yourself after installation. If you don't do this,
pterm will still work, but not update the user login databases.
Documentation (in various formats including Windows Help and Unix
`man' pages) is built from the Halibut (`.but') files in the `doc'
subdirectory. If you aren't using one of our source snapshots,
you'll need to do this yourself. Halibut can be found at
<https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/halibut/>.
The PuTTY home web site is
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
If you want to send bug reports or feature requests, please read the
Feedback section of the web site before doing so. Sending one-line
reports saying `it doesn't work' will waste your time as much as
ours.
See the file LICENCE for the licence conditions.