Kiwix library
=============

The Kiwix library provides the Kiwix software core. It contains the
code shared by all Kiwix ports (Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, ...).

Disclaimer
----------

This document assumes you have a little knowledge about software
compilation. If you experience difficulties with the dependencies or
with the Kiwix libary compilation itself, we recommend to have a look
to [kiwix-build](https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-build).

Preamble
--------

Although the Kiwix library can be compiled/cross-compiled on/for many
sytems, the following documentation explains how to do it on POSIX
ones. It is primarly though for GNU/Linux systems and has been tested
on recent releases of Ubuntu and Fedora.

Dependencies
------------

The Kiwix library relies on many third parts software libraries. They
are prerequisites to the Kiwix library compilation. Following
libraries need to be available:

* ICU ................................... http://site.icu-project.org/
(package libicu-dev on Ubuntu)
* ZIM ........................................ http://www.openzim.org/
(package libzim-dev on Ubuntu)
* Pugixml ........................................ http://pugixml.org/
(package libpugixml-dev on Ubuntu)
* ctpp2 ........................................ http://ctpp.havoc.ru/
(package libctpp2-dev on Ubuntu)
* Xapian ......................................... https://xapian.org/
(package libxapian-dev on Ubuntu)

These dependencies may or may not be packaged by your operating
system. They may also be packaged but only in an older version. The
compilation script will tell you if one of them is missing or too old.
In the worse case, you will have to download and compile bleeding edge
version by hand.

If you want to install these dependencies locally, then use the
kiwix-lib directory as install prefix.

If you compile ctpp2 from source and want to compile the Kiwix library
statically then you will probably need to rename ctpp2 static library
from ctpp2-st.a to ctpp2.a.

Environnement
-------------

The Kiwix library builds using [Meson](http://mesonbuild.com/) version
0.34 or higher. Meson relies itself on Ninja, pkg-config and few other
compilation tools.

Install first the few common compilation tools:
* Automake
* Libtool
* Virtualenv
* Pkg-config

Then install Meson itself:
```
virtualenv -p python3 ./ # Create virtualenv
source bin/activate      # Activate the virtualenv
pip3 install meson        # Install Meson
hash -r                  # Refresh bash paths
```

Finally download and build Ninja locally:
```
git clone git://github.com/ninja-build/ninja.git
cd ninja
git checkout release
./configure.py --bootstrap
mkdir ../bin                      
cp ninja ../bin
cd ..
```

Compilation
-----------

Once all dependencies are installed, you can compile kiwix-lib with:
```
mkdir build
meson . build
cd build
ninja
```

By default, it will compile dynamic linked libraries. If you want
statically linked libraries, you can add `--default-library=static`
option to the Meson command.

Depending of you system, `ninja` may be called `ninja-build`.

Installation
------------

If you want to install the libraries you just have compiled on your
system, here we go:

```
ninja install
cd ..
```

You might need to run the command as root, depending where you want to
install the libraries.

License
-------

GPLv3 or later, see COPYING for more details.