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 fltk2 toolkit which is not officially released yet. Lately 
fltk2 has been pretty stable, so you should be able to use any reasonably
fresh SVN snapshot from www.fltk.org. Nevertheless, we will (soon) keep our own "fork" 
called fltk-copy which is basically the last SVN snapshot that EDE is known 
to work with. If there are any patches required for proper EDE functioning, 
you should find them in fltk-copy tree. Further instructions will be in 
fltk-copy/README.ede

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

Also you will need Jam utility. Jam is make replacement and removes a lot of it's
limitations. Current 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:

1. run ./prepare

2. (old method, soon will be removed)
	./configure [OPTIONS] (we suggest using --enable-debug)
	cd edelib2; make; cd ..

  Then go into directories of individual modules and compile them. Type
	cd $MODULE; make; make install; cd ..

3. (new method, default)
	./configure [OPTIONS] (we suggest using --enable-debug)
	jam

  Installation is not finished yet.


Stuff that doesn't compile
--------------------------

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

- efinder
It will be ported to fltk2 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).


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

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

- efiler
Small file manager. Currently you can only view files but not copy/rename/delete 
etc. 

- eimage
Small image viewer. It should be fully usable but still some bugs present.


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

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

  - Complete edialog and become its maintainer
  - Port efinder to fltk2/edelib2 and become its maintainer
  - Write new enotepad using editor from fltk/test (I believe this is easier than
porting old enotepad to fltk2/edelib2) 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 fltk2/edelib2 and become its maintainer
  - Find useful fltk2 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. EDE coding standards and EDE HIG documents are being prepared.