INSTALL

Installation Instructions
*************************

This file describes how to install FreeLing library from source.

Additional information about FreeLing, how to install and use it 
can be found in FreeLing web page: http://nlp.lsi.upc.edu/freeling


If you are installing from source, you need to compile the library, 
and that means you need some development tools and 3rd-party dependencies.

You should have installed in your computer:
  - automake
  - autoconf
  - libtool
  - g++  (or another C++ compiler)
  - liboost
  - libicu
  - zlib     

See details on how to install these dependencies in FreeLing user manual
in the web page.

Once the tools and libraries are installed, you need to do.

  autoreconf --install
  ./configure
  make 
  make install

These four steps should be used regardless of how did you obtain your source
(either from a .tag.gz source package or from a git clone)

Read below for some hints and additional options you can use with these commands
to speed up compilation or to save disk space.


* First step (autoreconf) will create necessary configuration files to enable
customization to your particular OS.

* Second step (configure) will check that all dependencies are present and 
create required Makefiles to compile the library in your system.
  "configure" accepts several options (see "./configure --help" for details)
though the most used is "--prefix=/some/path" that specifies where you want
to install FreeLing (if prefix is not specified, the library will be 
installed in /usr/local).

* Third step (make) will compile the library.  This will take some time, so
you can go for a coffee meanwhile.
  If you have a multicore machine, you can speed up the compilation by 
using the option "-j" for "make". 
  E.g. "make -j 4" will use 4 cores and thus compile 4 times faster.
  Note that even if you have many cores, using too many of them will also
use a lot of RAM and migth freeze you OS. A good rule of thumb is using 
as many cores as Gb of RAM your machine has.

* Last step (make install) will install the library in its final location
(/usr/local, or the chosen --prefix, if any).
  If you don't have writting permision for the destination directory (as is
the case for /usr/local) this command must be executed as root (or with 'sudo').
  Once installed, you can remove your source directory if you don't want/need
 to keep it.
  Also, this command will install language data in /usr/local/share/freeling
(or the choosen --prefix, if any). Folders for unneeded languages can be 
safely removed to save disk space.