README

		                 GnuCOBOL
		https://www.gnu.org/software/gnucobol/
		https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnucobol
		https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnucobol

GnuCOBOL is a free (like both in "free speech" and in "free beer")
COBOL compiler, formerly known as OpenCOBOL.
It implements a substantial part of the COBOL 85, COBOL 2002 and COBOL 2014
standards, as well as many extensions included in other COBOL compilers.

GnuCOBOL translates COBOL into C and compiles the translated code
using the native C compiler on various platforms, including Unix/Linux,
Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

This package contains the following subdirectories:

    cobc        COBOL compiler
    libcob      COBOL run-time library
    bin         COBOL driver program
    build_aux   Helper scripts
    lib         Helper routines for missing OS functionality
    config      Configuration files
    po          International messages
    doc         'info' and 'pdf' files
    tests       Test suite (GnuCOBOL and framework for COBOL85)
    extras      useful COBOL programs

All programs except those in lib and libcob are distributed under
the GNU General Public License.  See COPYING for details.

Programs in lib and libcob are distributed under the GNU Lesser
General Public License.  See COPYING.LESSER for details.

For any copyright year range specified as YYYY-ZZZZ in this package,
that the range specifies every single year in that closed interval.

Although many have participated, most development thanks go to

    Roger While
    Keisuke Nishida

See AUTHORS for the author of each file.

============
Requirements
============

GnuCOBOL uses other software packages, some of these are necessary,
some optional.
See DEPENDENCIES for a complete list of these which may be helpful
if you build GnuCOBOL from source. You will also likely see some of those
when using pre-built binaries of this project, for example via your OS
package manager like apt, yum, pacman, brew, ...

============
Installation
============

See the INSTALL file for detailed information about how to configure
and install GnuCOBOL "building from source".
Special requirements and further installation notes are listed below.

** NOTE **
   The default installation path for GnuCOBOL is /usr/local.
   The installation path may be changed by specifying --prefix=<dir>
   as a parameter to the configure.
   Further parameters may be specified to affect
   include/library search paths.
   Execute ./configure --help for further details.

To generate/install GnuCOBOL :

**************************************

 Configure and build
    ./configure
    make

 Here you may run different tests with the version of GnuCOBOL that is
 not installed yet, see "Tests" below.
 This is *highly recommended* before installing.

 Install
    make install

** NOTE **
   You generally need super-user privileges to execute "make install"
   unless you changed the installation directory with
   "./configure --prefix=<dir>" or install to a different location with
   "make install DESTDIR=<dir>".
   In those later cases you only need to have full access to <dir>.

** NOTE **
   On Linux systems, if you are installing for the
   -first- time, you may need to run "ldconfig" (as root).
   In fact, it does not hurt if you always do this.

** NOTE **
   On some Red Hat (Fedora) installations and
   possibly other Linux distros, /usr/local/lib
   is NOT automatically searched at runtime.
   Edit /etc/ld.so.conf (or the equivalent file) and add
   /usr/local/lib to the file.
   Rerun "ldconfig".

**************************************

If you think you have a problem or just want to log
the output of make then redirect the output with :
    make 1>mymake.log 2>&1
    make install 1>myinstall.log 2>&1

**************************************

You can get back to a clean installation status by running :
    make distclean

**************************************


============
Tests
============


 To verify GnuCOBOL works before installing it, run the internal
 testsuite. Simply do
    make check
 This MUST succeed.  Please report any failures.

 You may optionally perform a series of COBOL85 tests.
    make test
 It is recommended that you also perform these tests.

** NOTE **
   The language interpreter "perl" is required to run COBOL85 tests.

** NOTE **
   Running "make test" will try to download the COBOL85
   testsuite if it is neither in the build-tree nor source-tree.
   For details see tests/cobol85/README.

 If you want to run both testsuites you can run
    make checkall


 You may also optionally perform a series of semi-manual tests to
 verify a working extended screenio.
    make checkmanual
 The test execution is automatic but the user needs to check for
 the expected result. See tests/run_prog_manual.sh for tweaking the
 test runner used (which is otherwise deduced from the environment),
 either in that script or via TESTRUNNER environment variable.

** NOTE **
   The semi-manual tests need either "xterm", GNU "screen" or "tmux"
   installed and will run within a detached "cmd" on MSYS based
   systems otherwise.
   For running with screen or tmux execute the following from
   a separate terminal, directly after running the testsuite:
    tests/run_prog_manual.sh attach
   ... and leave that using "exit" at the end of the tests

============

The following is only interesting for advanced use.
A normal user should not have recourse to use these
options.

There are many configure options (see configure --help for a full list),
these are the most important ones:

   --with-db             Use Berkeley DB >= 4.1 (libdb) (ISAM handler)
                         This is the default

   --without-db          Do neither use Berkeley DB nor any other ISAM handler
                         You will not be able to use indexed I/O

   --with-vbisam         Use VBISAM (libvbisam) (ISAM handler)

   --with-dl             Use the system dynamic linker
                         This is the default

   --without-dl          Use ltdl for dynamic program loading

   --with-patch-level=<n>  Set internal patch level to n (default 0)

   --with-varseq=<n>     Define the default format for variable
                         length sequential files.

         The default may be overridden at run time by
         setting the environment variable
         COB_VARSEQ_FORMAT to 0, 1, 2, or 3.

         For values of 0, 1 and 2, four bytes are
         written preceding each record. The format of
         these four bytes for values of 0, 1, 2 is
         as follows :
         n = 0 (default)
           The first 2 bytes are the record length
           in big-endian order. This is compatible
           with mainframe. Bytes 3 and 4 are set
           to binary 0.
         n = 1
           The 4 bytes are the record length in
           big-endian order.
         n = 2
           The 4 bytes are the record length in
           native machine order (int).
           (This was previously the default)

         For the value of 3, two bytes are written
         preceding each record :
         n = 3
           The first 2 bytes are the record length
           in big-endian order. The record follows
           immediately after beginning at byte 3.

   --enable-debug        Add '-g' debug option to make

============

============
Development
============

If you wish to hack the GnuCOBOL source or build from version control,
see HACKING.