130 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
130 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
# Expat, Release 2.2.3
|
|
|
|
This is Expat, a C library for parsing XML, started by
|
|
[James Clark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clark_(programmer)) in 1997.
|
|
Expat is a stream-oriented XML parser. This means that you register
|
|
handlers with the parser before starting the parse. These handlers
|
|
are called when the parser discovers the associated structures in the
|
|
document being parsed. A start tag is an example of the kind of
|
|
structures for which you may register handlers.
|
|
|
|
Windows users should use the
|
|
[`expat_win32` package](https://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/files/expat_win32/),
|
|
which includes both precompiled libraries and executables, and source code for
|
|
developers.
|
|
|
|
Expat is [free software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html).
|
|
You may copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the License
|
|
contained in the file
|
|
[`COPYING`](https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/blob/master/expat/COPYING)
|
|
distributed with this package.
|
|
This license is the same as the MIT/X Consortium license.
|
|
|
|
If you are building Expat from a check-out from the
|
|
[Git repository](https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/),
|
|
you need to run a script that generates the configure script using the
|
|
GNU autoconf and libtool tools. To do this, you need to have
|
|
autoconf 2.58 or newer. Run the script like this:
|
|
|
|
```console
|
|
./buildconf.sh
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Once this has been done, follow the same instructions as for building
|
|
from a source distribution.
|
|
|
|
To build Expat from a source distribution, you first run the
|
|
configuration shell script in the top level distribution directory:
|
|
|
|
```console
|
|
./configure
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
There are many options which you may provide to configure (which you
|
|
can discover by running configure with the `--help` option). But the
|
|
one of most interest is the one that sets the installation directory.
|
|
By default, the configure script will set things up to install
|
|
libexpat into `/usr/local/lib`, `expat.h` into `/usr/local/include`, and
|
|
`xmlwf` into `/usr/local/bin`. If, for example, you'd prefer to install
|
|
into `/home/me/mystuff/lib`, `/home/me/mystuff/include`, and
|
|
`/home/me/mystuff/bin`, you can tell `configure` about that with:
|
|
|
|
```console
|
|
./configure --prefix=/home/me/mystuff
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Another interesting option is to enable 64-bit integer support for
|
|
line and column numbers and the over-all byte index:
|
|
|
|
```console
|
|
./configure CPPFLAGS=-DXML_LARGE_SIZE
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
However, such a modification would be a breaking change to the ABI
|
|
and is therefore not recommended for general use — e.g. as part of
|
|
a Linux distribution — but rather for builds with special requirements.
|
|
|
|
After running the configure script, the `make` command will build
|
|
things and `make install` will install things into their proper
|
|
location. Have a look at the `Makefile` to learn about additional
|
|
`make` options. Note that you need to have write permission into
|
|
the directories into which things will be installed.
|
|
|
|
If you are interested in building Expat to provide document
|
|
information in UTF-16 encoding rather than the default UTF-8, follow
|
|
these instructions (after having run `make distclean`).
|
|
Please note that we configure with `--without-xmlwf` as xmlwf does not
|
|
support this mode of compilation (yet):
|
|
|
|
1. For UTF-16 output as unsigned short (and version/error strings as char),
|
|
run:<br/>
|
|
`./configure CPPFLAGS=-DXML_UNICODE --without-xmlwf`<br/>
|
|
For UTF-16 output as `wchar_t` (incl. version/error strings), run:<br/>
|
|
`./configure CFLAGS="-g -O2 -fshort-wchar" CPPFLAGS=-DXML_UNICODE_WCHAR_T
|
|
--without-xmlwf`
|
|
<br/>Note: The latter requires libc compiled with `-fshort-wchar`, as well.
|
|
|
|
1. Edit `Makefile`, changing:<br/>
|
|
`LIBRARY = libexpat.la`<br/>
|
|
to:<br/>
|
|
`LIBRARY = libexpatw.la`<br/>
|
|
(Note the additional "w" in the library name.)
|
|
|
|
1. Run `make` (which excludes xmlwf).
|
|
Or, to save step 2, run `make LIBRARY=libexpatw.la`.
|
|
|
|
1. Run `make install` (again, excludes xmlwf).
|
|
Or, if step 2 was omitted, run `make install LIBRARY=libexpatw.la`.
|
|
|
|
Using `DESTDIR` or `INSTALL_ROOT` is enabled, with `INSTALL_ROOT` being the
|
|
default value for `DESTDIR`, and the rest of the make file using only
|
|
`DESTDIR`. It works as follows:
|
|
|
|
```console
|
|
make install DESTDIR=/path/to/image
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
overrides the in-makefile set `DESTDIR`, while both
|
|
|
|
```console
|
|
INSTALL_ROOT=/path/to/image make install
|
|
make install INSTALL_ROOT=/path/to/image
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
use `DESTDIR=$(INSTALL_ROOT)`, even if `DESTDIR` eventually is defined in the
|
|
environment, because variable-setting priority is
|
|
1. commandline
|
|
2. in-makefile
|
|
3. environment
|
|
|
|
Note: This only applies to the Expat library itself, building UTF-16 versions
|
|
of xmlwf and the tests is currently not supported.
|
|
|
|
When using Expat with a project using autoconf for configuration, you
|
|
can use the probing macro in `conftools/expat.m4` to determine how to
|
|
include Expat. See the comments at the top of that file for more
|
|
information.
|
|
|
|
A reference manual is available in the file `doc/reference.html` in this
|
|
distribution.
|