Version: 2003-May-02
Copyright © 1997-2003 International Business Machines Corporation and
others. All Rights Reserved.
Today's software market is a global one in which it is desirable to develop and maintain one application (single source/single binary) that supports a wide variety of languages. The International Components for Unicode (ICU) libraries provide robust and full-featured Unicode services on a wide variety of platforms to help this design goal. The ICU libraries provide support for:
ICU has a sister project ICU4J that extends the internationalization capabilities of Java to a level similar to ICU. The ICU C/C++ project is also called ICU4C when a distinction is necessary.
This document describes how to build and install ICU on your machine.
For other information about ICU please see the following table of
links.
The ICU homepage also links to related information about writing
internationalized software.
| ICU Homepage | http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/ |
| ICU4J Homepage | http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/ |
| FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about ICU | http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/icufaq.html |
| ICU User's Guide | http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/userguide/ |
| Download ICU Releases | http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/download/ |
| API Documentation Online | http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/apiref/ |
| Online ICU Demos | http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/demo/ |
| Contacts and Bug Reports/Feature Requests | http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu/archives/ |
Important: Please make sure you understand the Copyright and License Information.
The following list concentrates on changes that affect existing applications migrating from previous ICU releases. For more news about this release, see the ICU 2.6 download page.
ICU code libraries can be made smaller by removing functionality. See How to Make ICU Smaller.
Unicode properties and algorithms have been upgraded to Unicode 3.2, which includes the addition of more than 1000 new encoded characters. The UCA (Unicode Collation Algorithm) table is updated to the current version 3.1.1, with Unicode 3.2-based canonical closure. All Unicode properties (except for those in Unihan.txt) are now available via direct APIs, and most via UnicodeSet.
ICU 2.2 has an extended search path functionality, more flexible data override capabilities, and removes lesser-known heuristics for determining the data path.
Note: while some of the old binary data may be still readable by ICU 2.2 (resource bundles, for example), they need to be repackaged in order to be used.
'packagename_'. Then use
packagename for opening.Experimental locales are ones for which we have incomplete data. Data for such locales used to be included in the default ICU download, but have been moved to a new locale data repository, stored as another ICU CVS module. This data can be added back into a customized ICU build, see the User Guide Data chapter. It can also still be viewed with the LocaleExplorer demo.
There are two ways to download ICU releases:
In the descriptions below, <ICU> is the
full path name of the icu directory (the top level directory from the
distribution archives) in your file system. You can also view the User's Guide to
see which libraries you need for your software product. You need at least
the data ([lib]icudt) and the common ([lib]icuuc)
libraries in order to use ICU.
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| readme.html | Describes the International Components for Unicode (this file) |
| license.html | Contains the text of the ICU license |
| Directory | Description |
|---|---|
| <ICU>/source/common/ | The core Unicode and support functionality, such as resource bundles, character properties, locales, codepage conversion, normalization, Unicode properties, Locale, and UnicodeString. |
| <ICU>/source/i18n/ | Modules in i18n are generally the more data-driven, that is to say resource bundle driven, components. These deal with higher-level internationalization issues such as formatting, collation, text break analysis, and transliteration. |
| <ICU>/source/data/ |
This directory contains the source data in text format, which is
compiled into binary form during the ICU build process. It contains
several subdirectories, in which the data files are grouped by
function. Note that the build process must be run again after any
changes are made to this directory.
|
| <ICU>/source/test/intltest/ | A test suite including all C++ APIs. For information about running the test suite, see the users' guide. |
| <ICU>/source/test/cintltst/ | A test suite written in C, including all C APIs. For information about running the test suite, see the users' guide. |
| <ICU>/source/test/testdata/ | Source text files for data, which are read by the tests. It contains the subdirectories out/build/ which is used for intermediate files, and out/ which contains the files test1.cnv through test4.cnv, and testdata.dat. Note that the tests call u_setDataDirectory("<ICU>/source/test/testdata/lib"), so that ICU will load these files as if they were part of the ICU data package, for testing purposes. This was formerly accomplished by setting the ICU_DATA environment variable to point at these files. ICU_DATA should not be set under normal circumstances. |
| <ICU>/source/tools/ | Tools for generating the data files. Data files are generated by invoking <ICU>/source/data/build/makedata.bat on Win32 or <ICU>/source/make on Unix. |
| <ICU>/source/samples/ | Various sample programs that use ICU |
| <ICU>/source/extra/ | Non-supported API additions. Currently, it contains the 'ustdio' file i/o library |
| <ICU>/source/layout/ | Contains the ICU layout engine (not a rasterizer). |
| <ICU>/packaging/ <ICU>/debian/ |
These directories contain scripts and tools for packaging the final ICU build for various release platforms. |
| <ICU>/source/config/ | Contains helper makefiles for platform specific build commands. Used by 'configure'. |
| <ICU>/source/allinone/ | Contains top-level ICU workspace and project files, for instance to build all of ICU under one MSVC project. |
| <ICU>/bin/ | Contains the libraries and executables for using ICU on Windows. |
| <ICU>/include/ | Contains the headers needed for developing software that uses ICU on Windows. |
| Operating system | Compiler | Testing frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Windows 2000/XP | Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 | Reference platform |
| Red Hat Linux 7.2 | gcc 2.96 | Reference platform |
| AIX 5.1.0 L | Visual Age C++ 5.0 | Reference platform |
| Solaris 7 (SunOS 5.7) | Workshop Pro (Forte) CC 6.0 | Reference platform |
| HP-UX 11.01 | aCC A.12.10 cc A.11.01.00 |
Reference platform |
| Windows NT/98 | Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 | Regularly tested |
| Mac OS X (10.2) | gcc 3.1 (Developer Tools, July 2002) |
Regularly tested |
| Solaris 8 (SunOS 5.8) | Workshop Pro CC 4.2 (use 'runConfigureICU SOLARISCC/W4.2') |
Regularly tested |
| Solaris 2.6 (SunOS 5.6) | gcc 2.95.2 | Regularly tested |
| FreeBSD 4.4 | gcc 2.95.3 | Regularly tested |
| Red Hat Alpha Linux 7.2 | gcc 2.96 | Regularly tested |
| Red Hat Alpha Linux 7.2 | Compaq C++ Compiler 3.2 Compaq C Compiler 6.5.6 |
Regularly tested |
| z/OS 1.2 | cxx 1.2 | Regularly tested |
| AIX 4.3.3 | xlC_r 4.0.2.1 | Rarely tested |
| AS/400 (iSeries) V5R1 | iCC | Rarely tested |
| CygWin | gcc 2.95.3 | Rarely tested |
| HP-UX 11.01 | CC A.03.10 | Rarely tested |
| NetBSD, OpenBSD | gcc | Rarely tested |
| SGI/IRIX | Rarely tested | |
| Tru64 (OSF) | Compaq's cxx compiler | Rarely tested |
Building International Components for Unicode requires:
(If you want to build with Microsoft Visual C++ .NET, please refer to the note about building with Visual Studio .NET below.)
The steps are:
Using MSDEV At The Command Line Note: You can build ICU from the command line. Assuming that you have properly installed Microsoft Visual C++ to support command line execution, you can run the following command, 'msdev <ICU>\source\allinone\allinone.dsw /MAKE "ALL"'.
Setting Active Configuration Note: To set the active configuration, two different possibilities are:
Batch Configuration Note: If you want to build the Debug and Release configurations at the same time, choose "Build" menu and select "Batch Build..." instead (and mark all configurations as checked), then click the button named "Rebuild All". The "all" workspace will build all the libraries, test programs and various ICU tools (e.g. genrb for generating binary locale data files).
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Note: ICU will build with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, though this is not a supported platform at the time of this writing. Visual Studio .NET will offer to convert the project files when you open the existing workspace file. Choose "Yes to All" in the dialog asking whether to convert the files or not (this creates new files) and then follow the rest of the build instructions.
Building International Components for Unicode requires:
The steps are:
Building International Components for Unicode on Unix requires:
Here are the steps to build ICU:
Configuring ICU NOTE: Type "./runConfigureICU --help" for help on how to run it and a list of supported platforms. You may also want to type "./configure --help" to print the available configure options that you may want to give runConfigureICU. If you are not using the runConfigureICU script, or your platform is not supported by the script, you may need to set your CC,CXX, CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS environment variables, and type "./configure". Some of the more frequently used options to configure are --disable-64bit-libs to create 32-bit libraries, and --srcdir to do out of source builds (build the libraries in the current location).
Running The Tests From The Command Line NOTE: You may have to set certain variables if you with to run test programs individually, that is apart from "gmake check". The TZ environment variable needs to be set to PST8PDT. Also, the environment variable ICU_DATA can be set to the full pathname of the data directory to indicate where the locale data files and conversion mapping tables are when you are not using the shared library (e.g. by using the .dat archive or the individual data files). The trailing "/" is required after the directory name (e.g. "$Root/source/data/out/" will work, but the value "$Root/source/data/out" is not acceptable). You do not need to set ICU_DATA if the complete shared data library is in your library path.
Installing ICU NOTE: Some platforms use package management tools to control the installation and uninstallation of files on the system, as well as the integrity of the system configuration. You may want to check if ICU can be packaged for your package management tools by looking into the "packaging" directory. (Please note that if you are using a snapshot of ICU from CVS, it is probable that the packaging scripts or related files are not up to date with the contents of ICU at this time, so use them with caution).
You can install ICU on z/OS or OS/390 (the previous name of z/OS), but IBM tests only the z/OS installation. These platforms commonly are called "MVS". You install ICU in a z/OS UNIX system services file system such as HFS or zFS. On this platform, it is important that you understand a few details:
z/OS supports both native S/390 hexadecimal floating point and,
(with OS/390 2.6 and later) IEEE binary floating point. This is a
compile time option. Applications built with IEEE should use ICU dlls
that are built with IEEE (and vice versa). The environment variable
IEEE390=1 will cause the z/OS version of ICU to be built with IEEE
floating point. The default is native hexadecimal floating point.
Important: Currently (ICU 1.4.2), native floating point
support is sufficient for codepage conversion, resource bundle and
UnicodeString operations, but the Format APIs, especially ChoiceFormat,
require IEEE binary floating point.
Examples for configuring ICU:
Debug build: IEEE390=1 ./runConfigureICU --enable-debug
zOS/cxx
Release build: IEEE390=1 ./runConfigureICU zOS/cxx
By default, ICU builds its libraries into the UNIX file system (HFS). In addition, there is a z/OS specific environment variable (OS390BATCH) to build some libraries into the z/OS native file system. This is useful, for example, when your application is externalized via Job Control Language (JCL).
The OS390BATCH environment variable enables non-UNIX support including the batch environment. When OS390BATCH is set, the libicuucXX.dll, libicudtXXe.dll, and libicudtXXe_stub.dll binaries are built into data sets (the native file system). Turning on OS390BATCH does not turn off the normal z/OS UNIX build. This means that the The z/OS UNIX (HFS) dlls will always be created.
Two additional environment variables indicate the names of the z/OS data sets to use. The LOADMOD environment variable identifies the name of the data set that contains the dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and the LOADEXP environment variable identifies the name of the data set that contains the side decks, which are normally the files with the .x suffix in the UNIX file system.
A data set is roughly equivalent to a UNIX or Windows file. For most kinds of data sets the operating system maintains record boundaries. UNIX and Windows files are byte streams. Two kinds of data sets are PDS and PDSE. Each data set of these two types contains a directory. It is like a UNIX directory. Each "file" is called a "member". Each member name is limited to eight bytes, normally EBCDIC.
Here is an example of some environment variables that you can set prior to building ICU:
OS390BATCH=1 LOADMOD=USER.ICU.LOAD LOADEXP=USER.ICU.EXP
The PDS member names for the DLL file names are as follows:
IXMIXXUC --> libicuucXX.dll IXMIXXDA --> libicudtXXe.dll IXMIXXD1 --> libicudtXXe_stub.dll (Only when OS390_STUBDATA=1)
You should point the LOADMOD environment variable at a partitioned data set extended (PDSE) and point the LOADEXP environment variable at a partitioned data set (PDS). The PDSE can be allocated with the following attributes:
Data Set Name . . . : USER.ICU.LOAD Management class. . : **None** Storage class . . . : BASE Volume serial . . . : TSO007 Device type . . . . : 3390 Data class. . . . . : LOAD Organization . . . : PO Record format . . . : U Record length . . . : 0 Block size . . . . : 32760 1st extent cylinders: 1 Secondary cylinders : 5 Data set name type : LIBRARY
The PDS can be allocated with the following attributes:
Data Set Name . . . : USER.ICU.EXP Management class. . : **None** Storage class . . . : BASE Volume serial . . . : TSO007 Device type . . . . : 3390 Data class. . . . . : **None** Organization . . . : PO Record format . . . : FB Record length . . . : 80 Block size . . . . : 3200 1st extent cylinders: 3 Secondary cylinders : 3 Data set name type : PDS
ICU Reference Release 2.4 contains partial support for the iSeries platform. After building ICU and running the tests, you may notice that some of the formatting tests fail. The formating failures can be ignored for now. These failures are expected to be resolved in a future release of OS/400.
Before you start building ICU, ICU requires the following:
The following describes how to setup and build ICU. For background information, you should look at the Unix build instructions.
CRTLIB LIB(libraryname)
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(CC) VALUE('/usr/bin/icc')
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(CXX) VALUE('/usr/bin/icc')
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(MAKE) VALUE('/usr/bin/gmake')
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(OUTPUTDIR) VALUE('libraryname')
libraryname identifies target as400 library for *module, *pgm
and *srvpgm objects.DSPSYSVAL SYSVAL(QUTCOFFSET)
CHGSYSVAL SYSVAL(QUTCOFFSET) VALUE('-0800')
You should change -0800 to -0700 for daylight savings.
cd data
mv Makefile.hide Makefile
system CRTLIB "LIB(datalibraryname)"
gmake OUTPUTDIR=datalibraryname
system CRTSRVPGM "SRVPGM(libraryname/LIBICUDATA)" "MODULE(datalibraryname/*ALL)"
"EXPORT(*ALL)" "TEXT('ICU 2.4 DATA')" "OPTION(*DUPPROC *DUPVAR)"
ln -fs /qsys.lib/libraryname.lib/libicudata.srvpgm out/libicudata.o
cd ..
del common/libicuuc.o
There are many ways that a person can package ICU with their software products. Usually only the libraries need to be considered for packaging.
On Unix, you should have used "gmake install" to make it easier to develop and package ICU. The bin, lib and include directories are needed to develop applications that use ICU. These directories will be created relative to the "--prefix=dir" configure option (See above). When ICU is built on Windows, a similar directory structure is built.
When changes have been made to the standard ICU distribution, it is recommended that at least one of the following guidelines be followed for special packaging.
Following these guidelines prevents other applications that use a standard ICU distribution from conflicting any libraries that you need. On operating systems that do not have a standard C++ ABI (name mangling) for compilers, it is recommended to do this special packaging anyway. More details on customizing ICU are available in the User's Guide. The ICU Source Code Organization section of this readme.html gives a more complete description of the libraries.
| Library Name | Windows Filename | Linux Filename | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data Library | icudtXYl.dll | libicudata.so.XY.Z | Data required by the Common and I18n libraries. There are many ways to package and customize this data, but by default this is all you need. |
| Common Library | icuucXY.dll | libicuuc.so.XY.Z | Base library required by all other ICU libraries. |
| Internationalization (i18n) Library | icuinXY.dll | libicui18n.so.XY.Z | Contains many locale based i18n functions. |
| Layout Engine | iculeXY.dll | libicule.so.XY.Z | Contains an optional engine for doing font layout. |
| Unicode stdio Library | icuioXY.dll | libustdio.so.XY.Z | An unsupported optional library that provides a stdio like API with Unicode support. |
Normally only the above ICU libraries need to be considered for packaging. The versionless symbolic links to these libraries are only needed for easier development. The X, Y and Z parts of the name are the version numbers of ICU. For example, ICU 2.0.2 would have the name libicuuc.so.20.2 for the common library. The exact format of the library names can vary between platforms due to how each platform can handles library versioning.
If you are using ICU in a multithreaded application, there may be a chance that the ICU global mutex is not initialized properly. Normally the ICU global mutex is initialized during C++ static initialization, but there are some compilers and linkers that do not properly perform C++ static initialization in a library. Here are some of the cases when the global mutex is not initialized:
Upon the first usage of most ICU APIs, the global mutex will get initialized. For example, you could call uloc_countAvailable() or uloc_getDefault() from your main() function before any threads are created. Those functions will initialize the global mutex. Without one of these function calls from a single thread, the data caches inside ICU may get initialized more than once, which may cause memory leaks and other problems. This problem normally does not happen when C++ static initialization works properly.
ICU does not use C++ static initialization for anything else, and disabling threads in ICU will disable all C++ static initialization in ICU. If you do not have a multithreaded application, you do not need to worry about the global mutex.
For some environments, ICU "is too large". There are two ways to remove parts and make it smaller: Remove some of its library code modules from the build (reducing functionality), or remove some of its data (possibly reducing only codepage/locale/etc. coverage without sacrificing overall functionality). For details about reducing the data size see the User Guide "ICU Data" chapter.
The header file source/common/unicode/uconfig.h contains
source-code-level "switches" corresponding to #if directives
in the ICU source code. Setting one of the UCONFIG_NO_...
switches to 1 (by setting CFLAGS/CPPFLAGS or adding a
#define at the beginning of uconfig.h) turns off
the code associated with one of the ICU service modules. Setting one of the
UCONFIG_ONLY_... switches to 1 turns off all modules that are
not essential for the functioning of the associated "only" service. For the
current set of available switches see uconfig.h itself.
When a source code module is turned off, then the data-building
makefiles should be modified to not generate the data files that are used
with that module. Some of the data-generating genxyz tools rely on the
module itself to build its data; they will generate dummy data files to
satisfy the dependencies of the unmodified makefiles (to make these
switches easily testable). Other data files for which the tools do not rely
on the related library modules (e.g., mapping tables [.cnv]
and transliterator files [.res, from
source/data/translit/]) continue to be built unless the data
makefiles are modified. For further details on data building see the User Guide "ICU Data"
chapter.
The C/C++ languages do not provide a portable way to specify Unicode code point or string literals other than with arrays of numeric constants. For convenience, ICU4C tends to use char * strings in places where only "invariant characters" are used — a portable subset of the 7-bit ASCII repertoire — so that locale IDs, charset names, resource bundle item keys and similar can be easily specified as string literals in the source code. The same types of strings are also stored as "invariant character" char * strings in the ICU data files.
ICU has hardcoded mapping tables in source/common/putil.c
to convert invariant characters to and from Unicode without using a full
ICU converter.
These tables must match the encoding of string literals in the ICU code
as well as in the ICU data files.
Important: ICU assumes that at least the invariant characters always have the same codes as is common on platforms with the same charset family (ASCII vs. EBCDIC). ICU has not been tested on platforms where this is not the case.
Some usage of char * strings in ICU assumes the system charset instead of invariant characters; such strings are only handled with the default converter. See the following section. (The system charset is usually a superset of the invariant characters.)
The following are the ASCII and EBCDIC code values for all of the invariant characters (see also unicode/utypes.h):
| Character(s) | ASCII | EBCDIC |
|---|---|---|
| a..i | 61..69 | 81..89 |
| j..r | 6A..72 | 91..99 |
| s..z | 73..7A | A2..A9 |
| A..I | 41..49 | C1..C9 |
| J..R | 4A..52 | D1..D9 |
| S..Z | 53..5A | E2..E9 |
| 0..9 | 30..39 | F0..F9 |
| (space) | 20 | 40 |
| " | 22 | 7F |
| % | 25 | 6C |
| & | 26 | 50 |
| ' | 27 | 7D |
| ( | 28 | 4D |
| ) | 29 | 5D |
| * | 2A | 5C |
| + | 2B | 4E |
| , | 2C | 6B |
| - | 2D | 60 |
| . | 2E | 4B |
| / | 2F | 61 |
| : | 3A | 7A |
| ; | 3B | 5E |
| < | 3C | 4C |
| = | 3D | 7E |
| > | 3E | 6E |
| ? | 3F | 6F |
| _ | 5F | 6D |
ICU has code to determine the default codepage of the system or process.
This default codepage can be used to convert char * strings to
and from Unicode.
Depending on system design, setup and APIs, it may not always be possible to find a default codepage that fully works as expected. For example,
char *
encodings there are two classes, called "ANSI" and "OEM" codepages. ICU
will use the ANSI codepage. Note that the OEM codepage is used by default
for console window output.If you have means of detecting a default codepage name that are more
appropriate for your application, then you should set that name with
ucnv_setDefaultName() as the first ICU function call. This
makes sure that the internally cached default converter will be
instantiated from your preferred name.
Starting in ICU 2.0, when a converter for the default codepage cannot be opened, a fallback default codepage name and converter will be used. On most platforms, this will be US-ASCII. For z/OS (OS/390), ibm-1047-s390 is the default fallback codepage. For AS/400 (iSeries), ibm-37 is the default fallback codepage. This default fallback codepage is used when the operating system is using a non-standard name for a default codepage, or the converter was not packaged with ICU. The feature allows ICU to run in unusual computing environments without completely failing.
If you are building on the Win32 platform, it is important that you understand a few of the following build details.
As delivered, the International Components for Unicode build as several DLLs, which are placed in the "<ICU>\bin" directory. You must add this directory to the PATH environment variable in your system, or any executables you build will not be able to access International Components for Unicode libraries. Alternatively, you can copy the DLL files into a directory already in your PATH, but we do not recommend this. You can wind up with multiple copies of the DLL and wind up using the wrong one.
Note: When packaging a Windows application for distribution and installation on user systems, copies of the ICU DLLs should be included with the application, and installed for exclusive use by the application. This is the only way to insure that your application is running with the same version of ICU, built with exactly the same options, that you developed and tested with. Refer to Microsoft's guidelines on the usage of DLLs, or search for the phrase "DLL hell" on msdn.microsoft.com.
If you are building on a Unix platform, and if you are installing ICU in a non-standard location, you may need to add the location of your ICU libraries to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH or LIBPATH environment variable (or the equivalent runtime library path environment variable for your system). The ICU libraries may not link or load properly without doing this.
Note that if you do not want to have to set this variable, you may instead use the --enable-rpath option at configuration time. This option will instruct the linker to always look for the libraries where they are installed. You will need to use the appropriate linker options when linking your own applications and libraries against ICU, too. Please refer to your system's linker manual for information about runtime paths. The use of rpath also means that when building a new version of ICU you should not have an older version installed in the same place as the new version's installation directory, as the older libraries will used during the build, instead of the new ones, likely leading to an incorrectly build ICU. (This is the proper behavior of rpath.)
If you are using ICU's Makefiles to build ICU on a new platform, there are a few places where you will need to add or modify some files. If you need more help, you can always ask the icu4c-support mailing list. Once you have finished porting ICU to a new platform, it is recommended that you contribute your changes back to ICU via the icu4c-support mailing list. This will make it easier for everyone to benefit from your work.
Try to follow the build steps from the Unix build instructions. If the configure script
fails, then you will need to modify some files. Here are the usual steps
for porting to a new platform:
The platform dependencies have been mostly isolated into the following files in the common library. This information can be useful if you are porting ICU to a new platform.
It is possible to build each library individually without our Makefiles.
They must be built in the following order:
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