SWI-Prolog Distribution Directory

** Last update: Thu Sep 28 2000 (Version 3.3.10)

AUTHOR
======
	Jan Wielemaker
	SWI
	University of Amsterdam
	Roetersstraat 15
	1018 WB  Amsterdam
	The Netherlands
	E-mail: jan@swi.psy.uva.nl

WEB-HOME
========

Please find the up-to-date information on  SWI-Prolog at the link below.
You will find the latest sources (also   accessible through CVS), a FAQ,
mailinglist archive, various additional packages, etc.

	http://www.swi.psy.uva.nl/projects/SWI-Prolog/


DIRECTORIES
===========

The SWI-Prolog source tree consists of the following directories:

./src		C sources
./boot		Prolog system predicates defined in Prolog
./library	Prolog user's library
./include	Include files.  Mostly for handling foreign-code
./man		Manual (LaTeX)


BUILDING SWI-Prolog
===================

Unix
----

SWI-Prolog configuration under  Unix  is   driven  by  the  GNU-autoconf
package. Please check INSTALL for the   generic installation options and
INSTALL.notes for some SWI-Prolog specific things.

SWI-Prolog should compile using any Unix-type   system with 32 or larger
(64) word-length and an ANSI-compliant C-compiler.

If SWI-Prolog crashes during the installation,  the most likely cause is
that the detection of mmap()  for   stack-memory  management or handling
exception-based stack guarding is not configured   properly.  If you are
knowledgeable in these issues, check src/test/mmap.c and src/pl-setup.c.
Otherwise, run configure using the options below,   first  to get rid of
exception-handling and second to  fall  back   to  malloc()  based stack
management.

	./configure --diable-segv-handling
	./configure --disable-mapped-stacks

Run `make clean && make' to recompile after reconfiguration.

MS-Windows
----------

Unless there is a special reason, please  use the binary distribution on
MS-Windows.

If you insist using the sources, the windows version is build using MSVC
5.0. If you have this version, load src\pl.dsw and recompile those parts
of the system you  need.  The  executables   are  created  in  the `bin'
directory, the import-libraries in the `lib'  directory. They can be run
from  this  location.  It  is  adviced  to   copy  them  into  a  binary
distribution to arrive at a properly configured system.


GNU-EMACS INTERFACE
===================

The Prolog-mode of GNU-Emacs is rather poor. Personally, I use XPCE (see
Prolog WWW home). For those whishing a proper Prolog mode for GNU-Emacs,
I got the following pointers from Sam Steel:

``Fortunately there seems to be such an  interface: though I suspect you
know it and know of some problem I  have missed. Though I have only used
it for a short while, it seems to work  for me. The only problem is that
the interaction between it  and  the  pager   for  the  online  help  is
imperfect.

It is the prolog.el mode for Emacs-20 at

   http://www.freesoft.cz/~pdm/software/emacs/prolog-mode/

There is also apparently a version for Emacs-19 at

   http://w1.858.telia.com/~u85810764/Prolog-mode/index.html

but I have not used this.

Both appear to be freely redistributable.  SWI Prolog is one of the
flavours of Prolog explicitly handled.''


MODIFYING SWI-Prolog
====================

You are free to modify SWI-Prolog under   the  GPL-2. As we also provide
licenses for use with proprietary software,   your  changes will only be
integrated into the base system if you grant us the copyright.


CONTRIBUTING
============

There are a number of ways in which you can contribute to the success of
SWI-Prolog. If you encounter problems or   have suggestions, please send
them to prolog-bugs@swi.psy.uva.nl. If you   write  applications, please
acknowledge  the  use  of  SWI-Prolog  in   your  application.  If  your
application has a web-page, please link to the SWI-Prolog home page (see
the top of  this  file).  If   you  write  reusable  libraries, consider
providing them to the SWI-Prolog user community   as  a package (see the
SWI-Prolog home page).

Finally, if you use SWI-Prolog for  commercial purposes, consider buying
a commercial license. It allows  you  to   use  the  system  without the
restrictions imposed by the GPL and helps   us to find the resources for
maintaining and improving SWI-Prolog.