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In order to use arch
, there are some software tools that you must
already have available.  
GNU Make You will need GNU Make
 in order to build arch
.
Standard Posix Shell Tools The package framework (i.e., the configure and build process) assumes that some standard Posix shell tools are available on your system:
        awk     find    mkdir   sh      wc
        cat     fold    printf  tee     xargs
        chmod   grep    pwd     test
        date    head    rm      touch
        echo    ls      sed     tsort
Note:  On some systems, the program installed as /bin/sh
 is
not a Posix shell (it may be a variant of csh
 or a very buggy
implementation of Posix sh
).   On such systems, you should use a 
different shell to run configure
, such as:
% /usr/local/bin/bash ../configure --config-shell /usr/local/bin/bash
The null Device Your system must have /dev/null
.  Information
directed to /dev/null
 should simply disappear from the universe.  As
a special "Green Software" measure, we have made provisions that
will enable your computers to convert that discarded information into
heat, which you may use to supplement conventional heating
systems.
The remaining tools are used internally by arch itself.  They don't
necessarily need to be on your PATH
 -- when you build arch
 from
source, run the configure script:
       % ./configure --help
and
        % ./configure --help-options
for information about how to point arch
 to the correct versions.
GNU Tar You must have GNU tar
.  arch
 invokes tar
 internally to
pack and unpack files that it stores in archives.   It is important
that all versions of arch
 use a compatible version of tar
, for
which purpose GNU tar
 was chosen.
GNU diff and GNU patch After much deliberation, I've decided to go
ahead and rely on the GNU versions of diff
 and patch
.
Specifically, you need a version of diff
 that can generate "unified
format" output (option -u
) and a version of patch
 that
understands that format and that understands --posix
.  (It would be
trivial to use "context diffs" and, thus, standard diff
 and
patch
, however, unified diffs are much easier to read, and I'm
hoping that picking specific implementations of these critical
sub-components will help contribute to the long-term stability of
arch
.)
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