Please read the COPYING file first.
If building from source, also read the INSTALL file (at least through the
"SUPER-SHORT VERSION") before going further.

Requirements
--------------------------------
The following packages *MUST* be installed in order for Gramps to work:
   Python 2.2 or greater
   Gnome 2.0 or greater
   PyGTK2 1.99.14 or greater
   Gnome-python 1.99.14 or greater
   PyXML 0.7.1 or greater

Many distributions already provide PyXML, but if your
installation does not have it, you can get it from
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=6473

The following packages are *STRONGLY RECOMMENDED* to be installed:
   Reportlab         Enable creation of PDF documents 
                     http://www.reportlab.com

   Python Imaging Library (PIL)
                    Enable generation of thumbnails for images
                    http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil

If, for some reason, you can't/don't want to install PIL, at least make sure
that ImageMagick is available on your system: http://www.imagemagick.org

WITHOUT eithr PIL or ImageMagick *YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE THUMBNAILS*
for any of your images. 

Documentation
---------------------------------
Gramps documentation is supplied in the form of XML files, which will be
installed in the GNOME help path(*).  Gnome help browser (Yelp) uses these 
(properly installed) XML files to display the documentation.

Of course, current HTML documentation can also be found on the gramps website,
http://gramps.sourceforge.net/help.html

(*) More precisely, they are installed 
in ${prefix}/share/gramps/gnome/help/gramps, 
where ${prefix} is given by the --prefix= option 
to configure (defaults to /usr).  


Building on non-Linux systems: i18n support and GNU make
--------------------------------------------------------

Linux has libintl (GNU gettext) built-in the C library. Other systems
are likely to have libintl as a separate or optional library. Also,
other systems may have a different make utility.

On those systems, like FreeBSD, you must tell configure where to find
the libintl library and the libintl.h include file:

CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -L/usr/local/lib" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local

Once you have done this, if make fails, use gmake (the name FreeBSD
gives to GNU make) instead.

--------------------------------
Donald Allingham
dallingham@users.sourceforge.net