Thank you for trying out the gEDA Suite CD distribution! Before you do anything else, please consult the INSTALL file for your distribution to learn about any peculiarities you will experience when you install the gEDA Suite on your system. --------------- What's on this CD? ------------------ This CD holds several high-quality, open-source applications useful for professional-level electronic hardware design. These applications have been bundled with an Install Wizard which checks your system configuration for required files and libraries, asks you for source and install directories, and then oversees the build process for the different components of the gEDA suite. The specific EDA tools contained on this CD are: gEDA/gaf -- Release 20070216 This is a suite of applications for schematic capture and netlisting of electronic designs. Specific directories installed as part of gEDA/gaf are: geda-gschem -- schematic capture package geda-gnetlist -- design netlister geda-gattrib -- design attribute editor geda-gsymcheck -- symbol syntactic validity checker geda-symbols -- symbols used in creating schematics geda-utils -- a variety of design utilities for gEDA geda-docs -- documentation for the gEDA suite geda-examples -- gEDA/gaf usage examples libgeda -- libraries for gEDA (mostly .so binaries) ngspice -- Release ng-spice-rework-17 (Latest release) This is an open-source port of the industry-standard SPICE simulation program for analog design. gnucap -- Version 0.35. Gnucap is a GPL'ed mixed-mode simulator, useful for co-simulation of analog and digital circuits. gspiceui -- Version v0.8.90 GSpiceUI is a graphical user interface serving as a front end to either ngspice or gnucap. Although either of these tools can be used with their own built-in CLI, gspiceui provides a friendlier alternative. pcb -- Version 20070208p1 PCB is a graphical PCB layout tool based on the GTK widget set. PCB can handle up to eight layers, and includes an autorouter. gerbv -- Release 1.0.2 A Gerber file viewer. Icarus Verilog -- Snapshot release 20061210 Icarus is popular Verilog compilation and simulation package. GTKWave -- Release 3.0.18 (Active branch) A waveform view for .vcd files (output by Icarus Verilog, as well as other logic simulators). Wcalc -- version 1.0 A GTK based program for calculating and synthesizing waveguides. Mcalc -- version 1.5 A set of web pages implementing a JavaScript waveguide analysis package. TkGate -- version 1.8.6 --- Not automatically installed! User must perform --- manual installation from tarballs on CD A Tk based digital logic simulation program. GHDL -- version 0.20 --- Not automatically installed! User must perform --- manual installation from tarballs on CD. The --- required version of gcc is also on the CD. A VHDL simulator. Taken together, these programs combined constitute a powerful electronic design suite; the fact that these tools are free, and open source software (F/OSS) is an testament to the power of the open-source software movement! ---------- How do I install these tools? ------------- This CD incorporates a built-in, GUI-based Install Wizard which takes care of the installation process for all these tools. The Install Wizard works only under Linux; Windows users must make alternate arrangements. If you are running a Linux system with a Gnome windows manager, just insert the CD into your machine's CDROM reader. Some Linux distributions will automagically mount the CD, find the installer, and begin running it. If your machine does this, just follow the instructions presented in each window. If your machine doesn't automagically mount and execute new CDs upon insertion, then load this CD into your CDROM reader, mount it, change directory (cd) into the CD's root directory, and run the installer by typing "./installer". The Install Wizard will start, and you need only follow the instructions presented in the windows. (Note that you can also run the installer from a different directory from the CD mount point. In this case, just invoke the installer using the full path to the CD, for example: "/mnt/cdrom/installer".) If you want a log file kept of the install process, invoke "installer" with the "--log" flag. This will create a file in your current directory called "Install.log" which records what happened during the installation. (Note that this works best when you run the installer from a directory where you have write permission.) Also, if you want to see debug messages during the installation process, invoke "installer" with the "--verbose" flag. Note that neither of these flags are set if the installer is started via the "autorun" facility; you must run the installer manually to enable these options. --------- Essential prerequisites and dependicies -------------- Summary: You need the following things already installed on your system: System libraries: * Gtk-2.6 or above. (along with its dependencies) * Gdk-2.6 or above. * Glib-2.6 or above. (glibc-2.2.X is known to fail due to binary incompatibilities.) Tarballs of these packages live on this CD in the SystemPackages directory. Build tools: * make * gcc Details: First off, your computer needs GTK-2. Both the installer, as well as most of the programs require GTK to create their GUIs. All modern Linux distributions come bundled with this library. However, if your Linux installation is particularly old (pre-2000, say), you won't have it. In this case, you're best off getting another computer since you're missing the modern Linux experience! :-) You also need to have glibc-2.3.2 or above. This library exists on RedHat systems starting with RH9. Note that RH8 and below won't work. Sorry! Time to upgrade! Finally, to install gEDA using this CD, you must have the usual build tools already installed on your computer. In particular, the gEDA installer assumes that you have "gcc" and "make" on your computer. Without them, you can't install the CD's programs using the installer. If you don't have these tools, get them! You need them for almost any Linux task. ------------- System packages installed by installer --------------- Besides the above system packages and utilities, the installer will look for the following packages, and install them as root if you don't have them: pkg-config guile gettext readline Tcl/Tk wxGTK Since some of these packages do not come pre-installed on some Linux distributions, I have bundled them here. However, the need to be installed by root! The gEDA installer can automatically install these programs as root; it asks you for the root password, and then uses an "expect" session to log in & install these packages. If you are the least bit paranoid about security, you may be happier to just install these packages yourself before running the gEDA installer. If you are *totally* paranoid about security, you may want to download the packages yourself, rather then using them off the CDROM. Of course, I have not placed any trojans in these packages, but I always want to give you freedom of choice! -------------------- Other system packages -------------------- Some programs in the gEDA Suite use other libraries which may not be present on all Linux machines. Several of these libraries are bundled on this CD in the directory called "SystemPackages". You may use these packages in case you need to do a manual install of a dependency. Therefore, if you have any problem installing a particular program, examine the installer's logfile (you did create one, didn't you?), and figure out what you are missing. Then, find that package under "SystemPackages" and try intslling it by hand. ------- On what systems can I use this install wizard? ------------ The install wizard has been written to be as self-contined as possible. This means that it should work on a wide variety of modern Linux systems. Not all systems work, however! The most recent information about functioning systems is contained on the gEDA wiki: http://geda.seul.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=geda:installation Note that if you can't use the install wizard to install on your machine, all is not lost! You can always copy over the tarballs and install them manually. ----- Can I have a little more detail about the installation process? ----- The installer is a custom application written in Python which manages the install process. It's job is the following: 1. Check your system for some required utilities & files (pkg-config and guile.) If you don't have them, it sets them up for you. NOTE: This requires root permission! As explained in the Prerequisites section above, you may want to install these yourself separately if you are paranoid about security. 2. Set the "source directory". This is the place where the source tarballs will be placed, and the various programs will be compiled. The Install Wizard gets this information from you. 3. Set the "install directory". This is the place where the the executable files, libraries, and other run-time files will be placed as the gEDA suite installation is performed. 4. Then, for each program, untar the source tarball and run "./configure && make && make install". This process can take more than an hour. However, once you have specified source and install directories, you can go away and relax. When you return, the Install Wizard will have taken care of everything for you! The Install Wizard is a custom Python application written by Stuart Brorson specifically for the gEDA suite. It's job is to oversee the usual "./configure && make && make install" process by which most GNU software is built and installed. Since most hardware engineers are not familiar with the GNU build process, it was felt that automating that process would help accelerate the adoption of F/OSS applications amongst hardware engineers. Note that since the Install Wizard simply manages the process of building the packages from source, installing the full gEDA suite can take an hour or more. By the way, if you are looking for a custom installer for *your* Linux application, and are happy with the job done by this gEDA Install Wizard, please contact Stuart Brorson at sdb_AT_electroniscript.com. He is willing to modify/customize this installer for other applications on a contractual basis. ------ Why does it take so long to install these programs? ------- Unlike a Windows program installer, his installer does not simply copy binary executables onto your system. Rather, it oversees the complex configuration and compilation process used by most GNU free/open-source software. Compiling the many applications included on this CD can take quite a while, and depends upon the computational power of your machine. Despite its slowness, this installation process has some advantages: -- The GNU installation tools are highly portable across the different Unix variations. This means that the installer -- in principle -- can install code on other Unix variants than Linux. (This is currently untested.) -- You are left with all source code on your machine, which is completely in consonance with the whole free/open-source ethos. -- If you invoke the installer with the right flags set, the configure and compilation process leaves logs on your system which you can use to debug any problems which arise. ---------- What should I do if I have a problem? ---------- If you are having an installation problem, read the "INSTALL" file relevant to your particular Linux distribution, as well as the "INSTALL.Problems" file. Also, make sure you run the installer with logging turned on. Then examine your install log to try to isolate the problem. If all else fails, you can try to contact the author of this CD, Stuart Brorson: sdb_AT_electroniscript.com. For problems related to running the applications contained on this CD, your best bet is to scour the web. Good places to look include: Specific Tool Information: The gEDA home page: http://www.geda.seul.org/ Ngspice home page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ngspice Gnucap home page: http://geda.seul.org/tools/gnucap/ PCB home page: http://pcb.sourceforge.net/ Icarus Verilog: http://www.icarus.com/eda/verilog/ GTKWave: http://home.nc.rr.com/gtkwave/ Wcalc: http://wcalc.sourceforge.net/ Mcalc: http://mcalc.sf.net/ TkGate: http://www.tkgate.org/ GHDL: http://ghdl.free.fr/ General EDA Information: Open Collector: http://www.opencollector.org/ Google: http://www.google.com/ ----------------- Licensing and Legalities ------------------ Each application in the gEDA suite is licensed under its own terms, usually the GNU GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). Ngspice is licensed under an older version of the BSD License. You may view the license terms of each application in its source directory once the tarball has been opened. The Install Wizard is copyright (C) 2004 -- 2006 by Stuart Brorson, and is licenced under the GPL. Please see the file LICENSE.Installer for details. ================================================================== Support free EDA software! If you would like to receive CD copies of the gEDA suite for your business, or would like to have an Install Wizard written for your Linux app, please contact Stuart Brorson at sdb_AT_Electroniscript.com. ==================================================================