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