ede/README.alpha

README for EDE 2.0 pre-alpha
============================

($Id$)

Please read this document before using or contributing to EDE 2.0 source code
before or during 2.0alpha release.


Build requirements
------------------

EDE 2.0 is using fltk1 toolkit from www.fltk.org. At the time of this writing, 
last released version was 1.1.7 and 1.1.8 was coming really soon. We 
recommend using the latest daily snapshot - they are extremely stable and 
that's what we use internally - although 1.1.7 should work too.

Nevertheless, we will (soon) keep our own "fork" called fltk-copy which is 
basically the last SVN snapshot of fltk that EDE is known to work with. If 
there are any patches required for proper EDE functioning, you should find 
them in fltk-copy/patches/ tree. Further instructions will be in 
fltk-copy/README.EDE

Since fltk lacks many things needed for developing a full *nix desktop 
environment, we have developed a small add-on library called edelib. This 
library is also required for compiling EDE2. It should be released together 
with EDE. We *strongly* recommend that you use matching versions of ede and 
edelib (e.g. released at the same time) or that you do SVN checkout at the 
same time.

Make sure you have efltk installed, because some packages still requires it.

Also you will need Jam utility. Jam is a make replacement and removes a lot 
of its limitations. Current EDE source can be built either via jam or make, 
but note that make builds will be soon removed. 

Jam can be downloaded from our repository.


Compiling
---------

At the moment, certain modules in EDE do not compile! In order to build and install
EDE do the following steps:

1. 	./prepare

2.	./configure [OPTIONS] (we suggest using --enable-debug)

3. (old method, soon will be removed)
 
  Go into directories of individual modules and compile them. Type
	cd $MODULE; make; make install; cd ..

  Since developers don't use make anymore, this method could get broken 
occasionally.

3. (new method, default)

	jam

  "jam install" is not finished yet. You can use various programs from 
their work directories, or copy them into e.g. /usr/bin


Stuff that isn't updated (requires efltk)
-----------------------------------------

- edewm
- eworkpanel
We are in the process of rewriting these modules from scratch. Please use edewm
and eworkpanel from EDE 1.x (it should work without major problems).

- efinder
It will be ported to fltk1 as soon as we finish efiler (see below) cause we 
would like to use same widgets for displaying file list.

- emenueditor
It will either be completely rewritten or removed, because EDE 2 will use XDG menus
(FreeDesktop.org).

- e*conf
Many of the control center applets will be dropped or replaced with something 
else. epanelconf obviously depends on eworkpanel which is not yet finished.


New modules in EDE 2.0
----------------------

- edialog
Command line utility for displaying dialogs (useful for scripting). It is very
UNFINISHED.

- efiler
Simple and lightweight file manager. Currently it's fully functional, but we 
plan some more features.

- eimage
Small image viewer. Likewise, functional but a few features will be added.

- ecalc
Scientific calculator.


Contributors wanted
-------------------

We would very appreciate help from contributors willing to take any of following 
tasks:

  - Port efinder to fltk/edelib and become its maintainer
  - Write new enotepad using editor from fltk/test (I believe this is easier than
porting old enotepad from efltk to fltk) and become its maintainer
  - Propose new designs for econtrol and eworkpanel (that are realistic to implement
with fltk, ofcourse :)
  - Find any old ede application, port to fltk/edelib and become its maintainer
  - Find useful fltk apps on www.fltk.org and see if they can be ede-ified

Also, EDE code is sparkled with comments starting with TODO and FIXME - 
please see what of that you can do (just type e.g. "grep TODO . -R"). EDE 
coding standards and EDE HIG documents are being prepared.