1 ================================================================
2 Copyright (c) 1999-2004 Arnar M. Hrafnkelsson. All rights reserved.
3 Copyright (c) 2004-2007 Anthony Cook.
4 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
5 modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
6 ================================================================
8 >> THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER <<
10 If you like or hate Imager, please let me know by sending mail
11 to imager@imager.perl.org - I love feedback.
13 ================================================================
16 ========================
17 1. Patent infringements?
18 ========================
20 Imager as such contains no patented algorithms. The external
21 libraries (which are not written by me) may or may not contain
22 patented algorithms. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR OBTAINING
23 LICENSE(S) TO USE SUCH LIBRARIES SHOULD YOU NEED ANY.
26 ========================
27 2. Compiling and testing
28 ========================
30 Some care has been taken to make the installation as smooth as
31 possible. This is rather hard due to the difference between operating
32 systems and site setups. To get started just type
36 It should blurb out a list of which libraries were found and which
37 not. If you add a library to the machine after installing Imager it
38 does not automatically become available in Imager. It only uses the
39 libraries that are found. If the list of found libraries is not what
40 you expected, then the Makefile.PL is either not searching in the
41 right directories or your box does not have the libraries you think it
42 does. For a list of where to get the libraries have a look at
43 3. External dependencies. To widen the search path for libraries and
44 include files set the IM_INCPATH and IM_LIBPATH variables. The
45 environment variables that matter when Makefile.PL is run are
47 IM_INCPATH colon separated list of paths to extra include files
48 IM_LIBPATH colon separated list of paths to extra library files
50 IM_VERBOSE turns on verbose mode for the library scanning and such
51 IM_MANUAL to manually select which libraries are used and which not
52 IM_NOLOG if true logging will not be compiled into the module
53 IM_DEBUG_MALLOC if true malloc debugging will be compiled into the module
54 do not use IM_DEBUG_MALLOC in production - this slows
57 IM_CFLAGS Extra flags to pass to the compiler
58 IM_LFLAGS Extra flags to pass to the linker
59 IM_DFLAGS Extra flags to pass to the preprocessor
63 When finding the libraries has been sorted out it's time for
67 and if that works then do
71 If either fails do take a peek at the file errep.perl. It's creates a
72 file report.txt. This is some information which will help me discover
73 where the problem is so I can try to fix it in future releases. If
74 you find running it ok (just remember - no warranty!) please send the
75 report.txt via email to imager@imager.perl.org.
79 A common problem is that libgif/libungif are sometimes linked to the X
80 libraries and then running the tests fails. In that case something
83 $ IM_LFLAGS="-L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11" perl Makefile.PL
85 Which simply sets the environment variables for the extra libraries
86 to include the X libraries (which we do not use at all, but must
87 included since libgif has been linked with it).
89 Otherwise you could just build giflib without any X11 dependencies:
91 # must be a clean tree
93 ./configure --without-x ...
95 Also note that libgif has a few bugs: You can run something like
97 $ perl -Iblib/lib -Iblib/arch t/t105gif.t
99 This way you can see what comments the test script prints out.
100 t/t105gif.t checks for an bug in libgif and prints out a patch
101 if that bug is present, note that this bug only affects the more
102 "advanced" features of libgif.
104 If for some reason you have libungif-devel package installed but
105 not libungif on RedHat then you will probably get lots of errors
106 like undefined symbol: FreeSavedImages when running make test.
107 Install libungif package to fix it.
109 Stock libungif 4.1.4 or later seems to fix all of the bugs, if you
110 have a problem that version of linungif (or later), let us know and
113 Imager needs to have a libtiff version of at least 3.5.5. In the
114 future we might consider supporting older libtiff versions. For
115 now you can either configure Imager manually (by
116 setting the IM_MANUAL environment variable to 1, in sh:
118 $ IM_MANUAL=1 perl Makefile.PL
120 and simply say no to tiff support when asked if you want it, the same thing
121 can be used to circumvent problems in gifs to get Imager going.
123 If it worked just continue with the installation as normally
126 Freetype 1.x vs Freetype 2.x
127 ----------------------------
129 These two libraries have some conflicting include file names, but as
130 long as you don't put the Freetype 2.x freetype.h directory in the
131 include path it should all work.
133 Put the directory containing ft2build.h in the include path, but not
134 the directory containing the freetype 2.x freetype.h.
136 If you see compilation errors from font.c you've probably made the
137 mistake of putting the Freetype 2.x freetype.h directory into the
140 To see which directories should be in the include path, try:
142 freetype-config --cflags
144 Ideally, freetype-config should be in the PATH when building Imager
145 with freetype 2.x support.
148 Macintosh dfont and suitcase font support
149 -----------------------------------------
151 Through Freetype 2.1, Imager can use Macintosh DFON (.dfont) fonts and
154 If you want to be able to use more than just the first face in the
155 font file though, you will need to configure freetype2 with the
156 --with-old-mac-fonts option:
158 ./configure --with-old-mac-fonts
160 You can use the index option to get to the other font faces in the
163 # get the second face from $file
164 my $font = Imager::Font->new(file=>$file, index=>1)
165 or die Imager->errstr;
167 If you're using a suitcase font, you will also need to force the use
168 of freetype 2 with the type argument:
170 my $font = Imager::Font->new(file=>$suitcase, type=>'ft2', index=>$index)
171 or die Imager->errstr;
174 ========================
175 3. External dependencies
176 ========================
178 Some hints about getting the Imager module to find the libraries it
179 needs for specific features. The libraries it uses are:
181 jpeg: http://www.ijg.org/files/
182 ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
184 ftp.uu.net is still linked from many places, including the Independent
185 JPEG Groups's home page, but it is non-functional.
187 png: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/libpng.html
189 you also need zlib to use png: http://www.gzip.org/zlib/
190 We have encountered problems with libpng 1.0.1, which were fixed in 1.0.5
191 Note: you should probably be using zlib 1.1.4, since 1.1.3 has a
192 potential security problem.
194 gif: http://sourceforge.net/projects/libungif
196 giflib/libungif has come a long way since the buggy versions available
197 when Imager's gif support code was written. Preferably you should get
198 at least version 4.1.4. If you have a recent Linux distribution you
199 should be safe with whatever giflib it provides, but if you're
200 building from source, please try to use the latest version.
202 libgif 4.1.4 has no problems known to me at this point.
204 tiff: http://www.libtiff.org/
206 t1: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/libs/graphics/
209 tt: http://www.freetype.org/
211 Precompiled versions of some of the libraries might be found at:
214 http://www.bullfreeware.com/
218 ========================
219 4. Logging and debugging
220 ========================
222 Logging is compiled in by default - if you should want to get of it
223 from the binaries you can do so by setting the env IMAGER_NOLOG
224 to something. If you want to enable malloc debugging to check for leaks
225 then set IMAGER_DEBUG_MALLOC to something. Needless to say it is
226 pretty pointless to have malloc debug enabled with no logging since you
227 can never see the malloc information that way.
234 Imager can be installed on Win32 systems. This was ported and tested
235 with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 with build 623 of ActivePerl. You can
236 use all of the features of Imager. You can also use Win32 GDI fonts
237 directly by supplying the 'face' parameter to Imager::Font->new(...).
239 I've tested with both MSVC++ 6.0 and cygwin (perl 5.6.1).
241 If you see an error under cygwin during testing along the lines of:
243 C:\cygwin\bin\perl.exe: *** unable to remap C:\cygwin\...some dll to the
244 same address as parent (0x...) != 0x....
246 you will need to install the cygwin rebase package and run:
250 If you get errors from your make tool, make sure you're using the same
251 make that was used to build your perl - generally GNU make for cygwin,
252 nmake for Visual C/C++ and dmake for MinGW.
258 Building Imager under OS X is generally straightforward. There are
259 some exceptions though:
261 a) you may find to need to ranlib library files in place after you've
262 installed them, for example:
264 ranlib /usr/local/lib/libgif.a
266 b) the version of GCC enabled by default on OS X 10.4 generates
267 incorrect code for some functions. To work around this run:
271 before building Imager and:
275 after building Imager.
277 This problem exhibits itself as test failures in t/t20fill.t
279 Imager 0.56 includes a workaround for this problem, but I wasn't
282 c) if you want to build GCC 4.0 from scratch and use that you will
283 need to adjust the command-line supplied during the link stage, so
284 that there is some other option before the -bundle option.
288 perl Makefile.PL LDDLFLAGS="`perl -MConfig -e 'print "-g $Config{lddlflags}"'`"
290 =======================
291 7. General information
292 =======================
294 The Imager module homepage is currently at:
296 http://imager.perl.org/
298 You can report bugs by pointing your browser at:
300 https://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Imager
302 ========================
304 ========================
308 Claes Jacobson ( Claes )
309 Philip Gwyn ( Leolo )
310 Michael Slade ( Micksa )
312 Brad Murray ( HalfJack )
313 Nicholas Dronen ( Veblen )
314 Michael G Schwern ( Schwern )
315 Rocco Caputo ( Dngor )
316 Graham barr ( Gbarr )
317 Mark-Jason Dominus ( Mjd )
319 Jason Alexander ( Jalex )
320 Randal R. Schwartz ( Merlyn )
322 Artur Bergman ( Sky )
323 Luc St-Louis ( Lucs )
325 Roderick Schertler ( Roderick )
326 Nathan Torkington ( gnat )
328 (and just to play it safe) all those I forgot to mention.