Compilation

This is how to build libax25, ax25-tools or ax25-apps from source. See also below for the special steps required to build from a fresh GIT checkout.

Build dependencies

Install autoconf automake1.9 libtool libncurses-dev. Parts of the ax25-tools package will also fltk and fltk development packages.

Automake1.4 on debian sarge and etch is known to be incompatible in preconfigureing the hdlcutil FL-Widgets tree.

Bootstrap (autoreconf, make)

for dir in libax25 ax25-apps ax25-tools; do
  cd $dir && autoreconf --install --force && \
    ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --mandir=/usr/share/man && \
    make && make install && cd ..
done

On a new fresh installation, you should do "make installconf" in the libax25 ax25-apps ax25-tools directories, too. But be aware, that make installconf overwrites existing configuration files in /etc/ax25/.

Note: earlier versions had a bootstrap script (with aclocal, autoconf and an appropriate ./configure line) but these days autoreconf should be used.

Ax25-apps naming conflicts

ax25-apps installs two program named call and listen. Despite ax25-apps using these names for longer than other packages various Linux distributions including Debian and Fedora have elected to rename these binaries. When building ax25-apps you want to make sure there are no such conflicts. Standard GNU autoconf which is being used by ax25-apps for configuration supports such renaming through the powerful but obscure --program-transform-name option like this:

./configure --program-transform-name='s@^call@axcall@;s@^listen@axlisten@' --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --mandir=/usr/share/man

This will install the call program and its man page as axcall and listen as axlisten. The argument of --program-transform-name is a sed(1) program; adjust as need for your installation. Because this is a standard feature of GNU autoconf, all versions of ax25-apps and also ax25-tools support this.

Versions of ax25-apps from 2011-12-11 or newer also honour the --program-transform-name, --program-prefix and --program-suffix options for the content and cross references of the man pages.