W3C libwww libraries for Sparc under Solaris 2.5

This directory contains a set of the libwww libraries compiled from the version 5.2.8 sources using gcc 2.95.1 (freely available here) under Solaris 2.5 on a Sparcstation. If you use another version of Solaris on the Sparc architecture, please let us know if these libraries work for you. If you use Solaris on an Intel x86-compatible CPU, you might wish to try using the Intel Linux binaries and lxrun. If you use Linux on a Sparc CPU, use the Sparc Linux binaries.

The libraries available here will be useful only if you wish to link your own software to these libraries under Solaris on a Sparc CPU. You do not need these libraries to install the precompiled PhysioNet applications available here, since those applications are statically linked to these libraries (in other words, the portions of the code within these libraries that are needed by the applications are contained within each of the application binaries). Known limitations in Sun's run-time linker for Solaris make it impossible to create a usable set of shared (.so) libwww libraries, so this package contains static-format (.a) libraries only.

To use these libraries:

• Download the gzip-compressed tar archive of the libwww libraries and save it in /usr/local .
• Install the libwww libraries by typing these commands:

  cd /usr/local
  tar xfvz w3c-libwww-sparc-solaris*

  Depending on how your web browser is configured, the tar archive may have been decompressed before it was saved. In this case, the command above will not work, and you should use this command instead:

  tar xfv w3c-libwww-sparc-solaris*

You may delete the archive after unpacking it. The libraries themselves will have been installed in /usr/local/lib, the corresponding * set of *.h files in /usr/local/include/w3c-libwww/, and the libwww-config utility in /usr/local/bin.

To compile a C source file that references these libraries (without performing the final linking step), you may use libwww-config to generate an appropriate set of gcc options:

gcc -c `libwww-config --cflags` foo.c

This command produces foo.o (not foo.obj).

To link one or more *.o files with the libwww libraries into an executable (*.exe) file, use a command such as:

gcc -o foo foo.o bar.o baz.o \
`libwww-config --libs` \
`libwww-config --libs` \
`libwww-config --libs`

This command creates foo.exe (not just foo). Note that three invocations of libwww-config, as shown, may be needed in order to resolve all dependencies.

See the W3C's libwww pages for updates, and for binaries for other operating systems.