1[](https://travis-ci.org/libexpat/libexpat) 2[](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/libexpat/libexpat) 3 4 5# Expat, Release 2.2.5 6 7This is Expat, a C library for parsing XML, started by 8[James Clark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clark_(programmer)) in 1997. 9Expat is a stream-oriented XML parser. This means that you register 10handlers with the parser before starting the parse. These handlers 11are called when the parser discovers the associated structures in the 12document being parsed. A start tag is an example of the kind of 13structures for which you may register handlers. 14 15Windows users should use the 16[`expat_win32` package](https://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/files/expat_win32/), 17which includes both precompiled libraries and executables, and source code for 18developers. 19 20Expat is [free software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html). 21You may copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the License 22contained in the file 23[`COPYING`](https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/blob/master/expat/COPYING) 24distributed with this package. 25This license is the same as the MIT/X Consortium license. 26 27If you are building Expat from a check-out from the 28[Git repository](https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/), 29you need to run a script that generates the configure script using the 30GNU autoconf and libtool tools. To do this, you need to have 31autoconf 2.58 or newer. Run the script like this: 32 33```console 34./buildconf.sh 35``` 36 37Once this has been done, follow the same instructions as for building 38from a source distribution. 39 40To build Expat from a source distribution, you first run the 41configuration shell script in the top level distribution directory: 42 43```console 44./configure 45``` 46 47There are many options which you may provide to configure (which you 48can discover by running configure with the `--help` option). But the 49one of most interest is the one that sets the installation directory. 50By default, the configure script will set things up to install 51libexpat into `/usr/local/lib`, `expat.h` into `/usr/local/include`, and 52`xmlwf` into `/usr/local/bin`. If, for example, you'd prefer to install 53into `/home/me/mystuff/lib`, `/home/me/mystuff/include`, and 54`/home/me/mystuff/bin`, you can tell `configure` about that with: 55 56```console 57./configure --prefix=/home/me/mystuff 58``` 59 60Another interesting option is to enable 64-bit integer support for 61line and column numbers and the over-all byte index: 62 63```console 64./configure CPPFLAGS=-DXML_LARGE_SIZE 65``` 66 67However, such a modification would be a breaking change to the ABI 68and is therefore not recommended for general use — e.g. as part of 69a Linux distribution — but rather for builds with special requirements. 70 71After running the configure script, the `make` command will build 72things and `make install` will install things into their proper 73location. Have a look at the `Makefile` to learn about additional 74`make` options. Note that you need to have write permission into 75the directories into which things will be installed. 76 77If you are interested in building Expat to provide document 78information in UTF-16 encoding rather than the default UTF-8, follow 79these instructions (after having run `make distclean`). 80Please note that we configure with `--without-xmlwf` as xmlwf does not 81support this mode of compilation (yet): 82 831. Mass-patch `Makefile.am` files to use `libexpatw.la` for a library name: 84 <br/> 85 `find -name Makefile.am -exec sed 86 -e 's,libexpat\.la,libexpatw.la,' 87 -e 's,libexpat_la,libexpatw_la,' 88 -i {} +` 89 901. Run `automake` to re-write `Makefile.in` files:<br/> 91 `automake` 92 931. For UTF-16 output as unsigned short (and version/error strings as char), 94 run:<br/> 95 `./configure CPPFLAGS=-DXML_UNICODE --without-xmlwf`<br/> 96 For UTF-16 output as `wchar_t` (incl. version/error strings), run:<br/> 97 `./configure CFLAGS="-g -O2 -fshort-wchar" CPPFLAGS=-DXML_UNICODE_WCHAR_T 98 --without-xmlwf` 99 <br/>Note: The latter requires libc compiled with `-fshort-wchar`, as well. 100 1011. Run `make` (which excludes xmlwf). 102 1031. Run `make install` (again, excludes xmlwf). 104 105Using `DESTDIR` is supported. It works as follows: 106 107```console 108make install DESTDIR=/path/to/image 109``` 110 111overrides the in-makefile set `DESTDIR`, because variable-setting priority is 112 1131. commandline 1141. in-makefile 1151. environment 116 117Note: This only applies to the Expat library itself, building UTF-16 versions 118of xmlwf and the tests is currently not supported. 119 120When using Expat with a project using autoconf for configuration, you 121can use the probing macro in `conftools/expat.m4` to determine how to 122include Expat. See the comments at the top of that file for more 123information. 124 125A reference manual is available in the file `doc/reference.html` in this 126distribution. 127
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