
1. Installation from distributed sources
========================================


1.1 Requirements
----------------


1.1.1 Requirements regarding R
------------------------------

    GNU R has to be installed in a shared-library configuration. This
    is not the default, so you may have to rebuild R.  If in doubt, look
    for a file 'libR.so' which should be in the lib/ directory of your
    R installtions, i.e. in

	/usr/local/lib/R/libR.so

    or

	/usr/lib/R/libR.so

    If R is not compiled with a shared library, you can rebuild from source
	with the following miminal recipe:

	# For GNU R, not littler
	./configure --enable-R-shlib
	make
	make install

    See the R manuals for details.

    Linux and OS X are known to be supported at this point.
    
    In all likelihood, the requirement of shared libary precludes
    installation of littler on Windoze.


1.1.2 Build-tools when building from git
----------------------------------------

    When building from the git repo, the autoconf / autotools / automake suite
    of programs is required. 

    On a Debian / Ubuntu based system do

        sudo apt-get install r-base-dev autoconf-dev

    to install R dependencies as well as build tools.

    When building from a release tarball, the auto* tools should not be
    required.


1.2 Basic Steps
---------------


1.2.1 Building from repo sources
--------------------------------

    The minimal recipe for installation should apply, i.e. start by

 	$ ./bootstrap

    which will first run the auto* tools to create the configure script.
   
    It the invokes the configure script to find the first path to R in your
    environment variable PATH.
   
    If you want the binary to be installation with a name other than 'r' 
    (which is a good idea on case-insensitive systems like OS X), then you 
    can set either --program-suffix or --program-prefix as in

      ./configure --program-suffix=sp			# creates rsp

    and 

      ./configure --program-prefix=little		# creates littler

    If there's another R installation you want to use, then you'll have to 
    readjust the PATH. For example:

		$ PATH=~/R-trunk/bin:$PATH ./configure

    Then

	$ make

    should build the 'r' binary, and 

	$ sudo make install

    should install it, as well as the manual page.


2. Installation from GIT
========================


2.1 Requirements
----------------

    As note above, but you will also need autoconf, aclocal, and of course
    git itself.


2.2 GIT clone
-------------

    Anonymous checkout is available via 

	$ git clone https://github.com/eddelbuettel/littler.git


2.3 Build preparation
---------------------

    You can simply run the catch-all script 'bootstrap':

	$ bootstrap

    as detailed in 1.2 above and produces a new executable.

    If you want to set configure options, you can do so too after an
    initial 'bootstrap' call.



3. Binary Installation
======================

3.1 Debian
----------

    Calling

	$ sudo apt-get install littler

    is all it takes if your sources.list file points to testing or
    unstable.


4. Feedback
===========

    Is encouraged ;-)

    
	- Jeffrey Horner <jeff.horner@vanderbilt.edu>
	- Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd@debian.org> 

 
