Installation on Linux

From Rxtx

Revision as of 03:56, 15 December 2007

The documentation below is a little dated and could do with some updating. Please could someone reformat and ensure their correctness:

Requirements

You will need JDK 1.4+ (JDK 1.3 might work), autoconf, automake, libtool, gnu make and gcc.

Note that you are recommended to use the JDK, as opposed to the gcc flavour, since the later will most probably cause you issues. If your OS does not provide a proper version, or a package manager that will get it for you, then you can download the JDK from the Java SE Downloads page.

Installing from Source

Installing Java

If you don't already have Java installed on your system, you will need to install it. The best way, if possible, is to use the package manager for your distribution to install it. Failing that you can get a JDK (Java Developer Kit) installer from Sun's Java Developer web site. For people only be running Java applications, then you can get the JRE installation, though note that you will not be able to develop or compile with this version. Since the general instructions are oriented towards developers we recommend having the JDK installed.

If the environment variable JAVA_HOME is not defined, then it is recommend that you define it in your login script. For example if you java installation is located at /usr/java/jdk6_03, then in a csh style shell:

setenv JAVA_HOME /usr/java/jdk6_03

or an sh style shell:

JAVA_HOME /usr/java/jdk6_03
export JAVA_HOME

Installing RXTX

Once you have downloaded the source extract it, and then in a terminal window navigate to the extracted directory and type the command:

./sh configure

This will configure the build and generate the necessary make files.

Note, that there may be supplementary options you may want to configure, though the standard options should suffice. To see what they are:

./sh configure --help

Once configure has finished running start the make process:

make

Once done you can now install it. You either do this as root user, or by using sudo:

sudo make install

RXTX should now be installed. See the development section for some example code to get you running.

Installing Binaries

To do...