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<h1>International Components for Unicode<br />
<abbr title="International Components for Unicode">ICU</abbr> 4.0 ReadMe</h1>
<p>Version: 2008 June 28th<br />
Copyright © 1997-2008 International Business Machines Corporation and
others. All Rights Reserved.</p>
<!-- Remember that there is a copyright at the end too -->
<hr />
<h2 class="TOC">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul class="TOC">
<li><a href="#Introduction">Introduction</a></li>
<li><a href="#GettingStarted">Getting Started</a></li>
<li><a href="#News">What Is New In This release?</a></li>
<li><a href="#Download">How To Download the Source Code</a></li>
<li><a href="#SourceCode">ICU Source Code Organization</a></li>
<li>
<a href="#HowToBuild">How To Build And Install ICU</a>
<ul class="TOC">
<li><a href="#HowToBuildSupported">Supported Platforms</a></li>
<li><a href="#HowToBuildWindows">Windows</a></li>
<li><a href="#HowToBuildCygwin">Cygwin</a></li>
<li><a href="#HowToBuildUNIX">UNIX</a></li>
<li><a href="#HowToBuildZOS">z/OS (os/390)</a></li>
<li><a href="#HowToBuildOS400">IBM i family (IBM i, i5/OS, OS/400)</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#HowToPackage">How To Package ICU</a></li>
<li>
<a href="#ImportantNotes">Important Notes About Using ICU</a>
<ul class="TOC">
<li><a href="#ImportantNotesMultithreaded">Using ICU in a Multithreaded
Environment</a></li>
<li><a href="#ImportantNotesWindows">Windows Platform</a></li>
<li><a href="#ImportantNotesUNIX">UNIX Type Platforms</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#PlatformDependencies">Platform Dependencies</a>
<ul class="TOC">
<li><a href="#PlatformDependenciesNew">Porting To A New
Platform</a></li>
<li><a href="#PlatformDependenciesImpl">Platform Dependent
Implementations</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<hr />
<h2><a name="Introduction" href="#Introduction" id=
"Introduction">Introduction</a></h2>
<p>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:</p>
<ul>
<li>The latest version of the Unicode standard</li>
<li>Character set conversions with support for over 220 codepages</li>
<li>Locale data for more than 250 locales</li>
<li>Language sensitive text collation (sorting) and searching based on the
Unicode Collation Algorithm (=ISO 14651)</li>
<li>Regular expression matching and Unicode sets</li>
<li>Transformations for normalization, upper/lowercase, script
transliterations (50+ pairs)</li>
<li>Resource bundles for storing and accessing localized information</li>
<li>Date/Number/Message formatting and parsing of culture specific
input/output formats</li>
<li>Calendar specific date and time manipulation</li>
<li>Complex text layout for Arabic, Hebrew, Indic and Thai</li>
<li>Text boundary analysis for finding characters, word and sentence
boundaries</li>
</ul>
<p>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.</p>
<h2><a name="GettingStarted" href="#GettingStarted" id=
"GettingStarted">Getting started</a></h2>
<p>This document describes how to build and install ICU on your machine. For
other information about ICU please see the following table of links.<br />
The ICU homepage also links to related information about writing
internationalized software.</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" width="100%" summary=
"These are some useful links regarding ICU and internationalization in general.">
<caption>
Here are some useful links regarding ICU and internationalization in
general.
</caption>
<tr>
<td>ICU, ICU4C & ICU4J Homepage</td>
<td><a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/">http://www.icu-project.org/</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about ICU</td>
<td><a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/icufaq.html">http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/icufaq.html</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ICU User's Guide</td>
<td><a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/">http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Download ICU Releases</td>
<td><a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/download/">http://www.icu-project.org/download/</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ICU4C API Documentation Online</td>
<td><a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4c/">http://www.icu-project.org/apiref/icu4c/</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Online ICU Demos</td>
<td><a href=
"http://demo.icu-project.org/icu-bin/icudemos">http://demo.icu-project.org/icu-bin/icudemos</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Contacts and Bug Reports/Feature Requests</td>
<td><a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/contacts.html">http://www.icu-project.org/contacts.html</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><strong>Important:</strong> Please make sure you understand the <a href=
"license.html">Copyright and License Information</a>.</p>
<h2><a name="News" href="#News" id="News">What is new in this
release?</a></h2>
<p>To see which APIs are new or changed in this release, view the <a href="APIChangeReport.html">ICU4C API Change Report</a>. </p>
<p><!-- The following list concentrates on <em>changes that affect existing
applications migrating from previous ICU releases</em>. --> For more news about
this release, see the <a href="http://www.icu-project.org/download/">ICU 4.0
download page</a>.</p>
<h2><a name="Download" href="#Download" id="Download">How To Download the
Source Code</a></h2>
<p>There are two ways to download ICU releases:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Official Release Snapshot:</strong><br />
If you want to use ICU (as opposed to developing it), you should download
an official packaged version of the ICU source code. These versions are
tested more thoroughly than day-to-day development builds of the system,
and they are packaged in zip and tar files for convenient download. These
packaged files can be found at <a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/download/">http://www.icu-project.org/download/</a>.<br />
The packaged snapshots are named <strong>icu-nnnn.zip</strong> or
<strong>icu-nnnn.tgz</strong>, where nnnn is the version number. The .zip
file is used for Windows platforms, while the .tgz file is preferred on
most other platforms.<br />
Please unzip this file. </li>
<li><strong>Subversion Source Repository:</strong><br />
If you are interested in developing features, patches, or bug fixes for
ICU, you should probably be working with the latest version of the ICU
source code. You will need to check the code out of our Subversion repository to
ensure that you have the most recent version of all of the files. See our
<a href="http://www.icu-project.org/repository/">source
repository</a> for details.</li>
</ul>
<h2><a name="SourceCode" href="#SourceCode" id="SourceCode">ICU Source Code
Organization</a></h2>
<p>In the descriptions below, <strong><i><ICU></i></strong> 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 <a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/design.html">ICU Architectural
Design</a> section of the User's Guide to see which libraries you need for
your software product. You need at least the data (<code>[lib]icudt</code>)
and the common (<code>[lib]icuuc</code>) libraries in order to use ICU.</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" width="100%" summary=
"The following files describe the code drop.">
<caption>
The following files describe the code drop.
</caption>
<tr>
<th scope="col">File</th>
<th scope="col">Description</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>readme.html</td>
<td>Describes the International Components for Unicode (this file)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>license.html</td>
<td>Contains the text of the ICU license</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><br />
</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" width="100%" summary=
"The following directories contain source code and data files.">
<caption>
The following directories contain source code and data files.
</caption>
<tr>
<th scope="col">Directory</th>
<th scope="col">Description</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>common</b>/</td>
<td>The core Unicode and support functionality, such as resource bundles,
character properties, locales, codepage conversion, normalization,
Unicode properties, Locale, and UnicodeString.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>i18n</b>/</td>
<td>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.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>layout</b>/</td>
<td>Contains the ICU layout engine (not a rasterizer).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>io</b>/</td>
<td>Contains the ICU I/O library.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>data</b>/</td>
<td>
<p>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.</p>
<p>If some of the following directories are missing, it's probably
because you got an official download. If you need the data source files
for customization, then please download the ICU source code from <a
href="http://www.icu-project.org/repository/">subversion</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li><b>in/</b> A directory that contains a pre-built data library for
ICU. A standard source code package will contain this file without
several of the following directories. This is to simplify the build
process for the majority of users and to reduce platform porting
issues.</li>
<li><b>brkitr/</b> Data files for character, word, sentence, title
casing and line boundary analysis.</li>
<li><b>locales/</b> These .txt files contain ICU language and
culture-specific localization data. Two special bundles are
<b>root</b>, which is the fallback data and parent of other bundles,
and <b>index</b>, which contains a list of installed bundles. The
makefile <b>resfiles.mk</b> contains the list of resource bundle
files.</li>
<li><b>mappings/</b> Here are the code page converter tables. These
.ucm files contain mappings to and from Unicode. These are compiled
into .cnv files. <b>convrtrs.txt</b> is the alias mapping table from
various converter name formats to ICU internal format and vice versa.
It produces cnvalias.icu. The makefiles <b>ucmfiles.mk,
ucmcore.mk,</b> and <b>ucmebcdic.mk</b> contain the list of
converters to be built.</li>
<li><b>translit/</b> This directory contains transliterator rules as
resource bundles, a makefile <b>trnsfiles.mk</b> containing the list
of installed system translitaration files, and as well the special
bundle <b>translit_index</b> which lists the system transliterator
aliases.</li>
<li><b>unidata/</b> This directory contains the Unicode data files.
Please see <a href=
"http://www.unicode.org/">http://www.unicode.org/</a> for more
information.</li>
<li><b>misc/</b> The misc directory contains other data files which
did not fit into the above categories. Currently it only contains
time zone information, and a name preperation file for <a href=
"http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3490.txt">IDNA</a>.</li>
<li><b>out/</b> This directory contains the assembled memory mapped
files.</li>
<li><b>out/build/</b> This directory contains intermediate (compiled)
files, such as .cnv, .res, etc.</li>
</ul>
<p>If you are creating a special ICU build, you can set the ICU_DATA
environment variable to the out/ or the out/build/ directories, but
this is generally discouraged because most people set it incorrectly.
You can view the <a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/icudata.html">ICU Data
Management</a> section of the ICU User's Guide for details.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/test/<b>intltest</b>/</td>
<td>A test suite including all C++ APIs. For information about running
the test suite, see the build instructions specific to your platform
later in this document.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/test/<b>cintltst</b>/</td>
<td>A test suite written in C, including all C APIs. For information
about running the test suite, see the build instructions specific to your
platform later in this document.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/test/<b>iotest</b>/</td>
<td>A test suite written in C and C++ to test the icuio library. For
information about running the test suite, see the build instructions
specific to your platform later in this document.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/test/<b>testdata</b>/</td>
<td>Source text files for data, which are read by the tests. It contains
the subdirectories <b>out/build/</b> which is used for intermediate
files, and <b>out/</b> which contains <b>testdata.dat.</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>tools</b>/</td>
<td>Tools for generating the data files. Data files are generated by
invoking <i><ICU></i>/source/data/build/makedata.bat on Win32 or
<i><ICU></i>/source/make on UNIX.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>samples</b>/</td>
<td>Various sample programs that use ICU</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>extra</b>/</td>
<td>Non-supported API additions. Currently, it contains the 'uconv' tool
to perform codepage conversion on files.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/<b>packaging</b>/</td>
<td>This directory contain scripts and tools for packaging the final
ICU build for various release platforms.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>config</b>/</td>
<td>Contains helper makefiles for platform specific build commands. Used
by 'configure'.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/source/<b>allinone</b>/</td>
<td>Contains top-level ICU workspace and project files, for instance to
build all of ICU under one MSVC project.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/<b>include</b>/</td>
<td>Contains the headers needed for developing software that uses ICU on
Windows.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/<b>lib</b>/</td>
<td>Contains the import libraries for linking ICU into your Windows
application.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><i><ICU></i>/<b>bin</b>/</td>
<td>Contains the libraries and executables for using ICU on Windows.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<!-- end of ICU structure ==================================== -->
<h2><a name="HowToBuild" href="#HowToBuild" id="HowToBuild">How To Build And
Install ICU</a></h2>
<h3><a name="HowToBuildSupported" href="#HowToBuildSupported" id=
"HowToBuildSupported">Supported Platforms</a></h3>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" summary=
"ICU can be built on many platforms.">
<caption>
Here is a status of functionality of ICU on several different platforms.
</caption>
<tr>
<th scope="col">Operating system</th>
<th scope="col">Compiler</th>
<th scope="col">Testing frequency</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Windows Vista SP1 (32 bit)</td>
<td>Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 (8.0)</td>
<td>Reference platform</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Windows Server 2003 (64 bit)</td>
<td>Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 (8.0)</td>
<td>Reference platform</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (x86, 32 bit)</td>
<td>gcc 4.1.2</td>
<td>Reference platform</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>AIX 6.1 (Power, 64-bit)</td>
<td>IBM VisualAge 9</td>
<td>Reference platform</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Solaris 10 (Sparc, 32-bit, SunOS 5.10)</td>
<td>Sun Studio 12 <!--(Sun C++ 5.8)--></td>
<td>Reference platform</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HP-UX IIiv3 (Itanium, 64-bit)</td>
<td>aCC A.6.14</td>
<td>Reference platform</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>AIX 5.3</td>
<td>IBM XL C/C++ 8.0</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Windows XP</td>
<td>Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 (8.0)</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 4</td>
<td>gcc 3.4.4</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>AIX 5.2</td>
<td>Visual Age C++ 6.0</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Solaris 9 (SunOS 5.9)</td>
<td>Sun Studio 8 (Sun C++ 5.5)</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HP-UX 11.11 (PA-RISC)</td>
<td>aCC A.03.50<br />
cc B.11.11.08</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Windows 2000 with Cygwin</td>
<td>Microsoft Visual C++ 2003 (7.1)</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Windows Server 2008 x64</td>
<td>Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 (8.0)</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Mac OS X (10.4)</td>
<td>gcc 4.0.1</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Solaris 10</td>
<td>gcc 4.0.3</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP1</td>
<td>Intel C++ Compiler 9.0</td>
<td>Regularly tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>z/OS 1.7</td>
<td>cxx 1.7</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cygwin</td>
<td>gcc 3.4.4</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>IBM i family (IBM i, i5/OS, OS/400)</td>
<td>iCC</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Windows Vista x64</td>
<td>Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 (8.0)</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MinGW</td>
<td>gcc</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD</td>
<td>gcc</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (PowerPC)</td>
<td>IBM XL C/C++ 8.0</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>QNX</td>
<td>gcc</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>BeOS</td>
<td>gcc</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>SGI/IRIX</td>
<td>MIPSpro CC</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tru64 (OSF)</td>
<td>Compaq's cxx compiler</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MP-RAS</td>
<td>NCR MP-RAS C/C++ Compiler</td>
<td>Rarely tested</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p><br />
</p>
<h4>Key to testing frequency</h4>
<dl>
<dt><i>Reference platform</i></dt>
<dd>ICU will work on these platforms with these compilers</dd>
<dt><i>Regularly tested</i></dt>
<dd>ICU should work on these platforms with these compilers</dd>
<dt><i>Rarely tested</i></dt>
<dd>ICU has been ported to these platforms but may not have been tested
there recently</dd>
</dl>
<h3><a name="HowToBuildWindows" href="#HowToBuildWindows" id=
"HowToBuildWindows">How To Build And Install On Windows</a></h3>
<p>Building International Components for Unicode requires:</p>
<ul>
<li>Microsoft Windows 2000 or above</li>
<li>Microsoft Visual C++ 2005</li>
<li><a href="#HowToBuildCygwin">Cygwin</a> is required when other versions
of Microsoft Visual C++ and other compilers are used to build ICU.</li>
</ul>
<p>The steps are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Unzip the icu-XXXX.zip file into any convenient location. Using command
line zip, type "unzip -a icu-XXXX.zip -d drive:\directory", or just use
WinZip.</li>
<li>Be sure that the ICU binary directory, <i><ICU></i>\bin\, is
included in the <strong>PATH</strong> environment variable. The tests will
not work without the location of the ICU DLL files in the path.</li>
<li>Open the "<i><ICU></i>\source\allinone\allinone.sln" workspace
file in Microsoft Visual Studio 2003. (This solution includes all the
International Components for Unicode libraries, necessary ICU building
tools, and the test suite projects). Please see the <a href=
"#HowToBuildWindowsCommandLine">command line note below</a> if you want to
build from the command line instead.</li>
<li>Set the active platform to "Win32" or "x64" (See <a href="#HowToBuildWindowsPlatform">Windows platform note</a> below)
and configuration to "Debug" or "Release" (See <a href="#HowToBuildWindowsConfig">Windows configuration note</a> below).</li>
<li>Choose the "Build" menu and select "Rebuild Solution". If you want to
build the Debug and Release at the same time, see the <a href=
"#HowToBuildWindowsBatch">batch configuration note</a> below.</li>
<li>Run the C++ test suite, "intltest". To do this: set the active startup
project to "intltest", and press Ctrl+F5 to run it. Make sure that it
passes without any errors.</li>
<li>Run the C test suite, "cintltst". To do this: set the active startup
project to "cintltst", and press Ctrl+F5 to run it. Make sure that it
passes without any errors.</li>
<li>Run the I/O test suite, "iotest". To do this: set the active startup
project to "iotest", and press Ctrl+F5 to run it. Make sure that it passes
without any errors.</li>
<li>You are now able to develop applications with ICU by using the
libraries and tools in <i><ICU></i>\bin\. The headers are in
<i><ICU></i>\include\ and the link libraries are in
<i><ICU></i>\lib\. To install the ICU runtime on a machine, or ship
it with your application, copy the needed components from
<i><ICU></i>\bin\ to a location on the system PATH or to your
application directory.</li>
</ol>
<p><a name="HowToBuildWindowsCommandLine" id=
"HowToBuildWindowsCommandLine"><strong>Using MSDEV At The Command Line
Note:</strong></a> 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, 'devenv.com
<i><ICU></i>\source\allinone\allinone.sln /build "Win32|Release"'. You can also
use Cygwin with this compiler to build ICU, and you can refer to the <a href=
"#HowToBuildCygwin">How To Build And Install On Windows with Cygwin</a>
section for more details.</p>
<p><a name="HowToBuildWindowsPlatform" id=
"HowToBuildWindowsPlatform"><strong>Setting Active Platform
Note:</strong></a> Even though you are able to select "x64" as the active platform, if your operating system is
not a 64 bit version of Windows, the build will fail. To set the active platform, two different possibilities are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Choose "Build" menu, select "Configuration Manager...", and select
"Win32" or "x64" for the Active Platform Solution.</li>
<li>Another way is to select the desired build configuration from "Solution
Platforms" dropdown menu from the standard toolbar. It will say
"Win32" or "x64" in the dropdown list.</li>
</ul>
<p><a name="HowToBuildWindowsConfig" id=
"HowToBuildWindowsConfig"><strong>Setting Active Configuration
Note:</strong></a> To set the active configuration, two different
possibilities are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Choose "Build" menu, select "Configuration Manager...", and select
"Release" or "Debug" for the Active Configuration Solution.</li>
<li>Another way is to select the desired build configuration from "Solution
Configurations" dropdown menu from the standard toolbar. It will say
"Release" or "Debug" in the dropdown list.</li>
</ul>
<p><a name="HowToBuildWindowsBatch" id="HowToBuildWindowsBatch"><strong>Batch
Configuration Note:</strong></a> If you want to build the Win32 and x64 platforms and
Debug and Release configurations at the same time, choose "Build" menu, and select "Batch
Build...". Click the "Select All" button, and then click the "Rebuild"
button.</p>
<h3><a name="HowToBuildCygwin" href="#HowToBuildCygwin" id=
"HowToBuildCygwin">How To Build And Install On Windows with Cygwin</a></h3>
<p>Building International Components for Unicode with this configuration
requires:</p>
<ul>
<li>Microsoft 2000 or above</li>
<li>Microsoft Visual C++ 2003 or above (when gcc isn't used).</li>
<li>
Cygwin with the following installed:
<ul>
<li>bash</li>
<li>GNU make</li>
<li>man (if you plan to look at the man pages)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>There are two ways you can build ICU with Cygwin. You can build with gcc
or Microsoft Visual C++. If you use gcc, the resulting libraries and tools
will depend on the Cygwin environment. If you use Microsoft Visual C++, the
resulting libraries and tools do not depend on Cygwin and can be more easily
distributed to other Windows computers (the generated man pages and shell
scripts still need Cygwin). To build with gcc, please follow the "<a href=
"#HowToBuildUNIX">How To Build And Install On UNIX</a>" instructions, while
you are inside a Cygwin bash shell. To build with Microsoft Visual C++,
please use the following instructions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Start the Windows "Command Prompt" window. This is different from the
gcc build, which requires the Cygwin Bash command prompt. The Microsoft
Visual C++ compiler will not work with a bash command prompt.</li>
<li>If the computer isn't set up to use Visual C++ from the command line,
you need to run vcvars32.bat. For example "<tt>C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat</tt>" can be used for 32-bit builds
<strong>or</strong> "<tt>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio
8\VC\bin\amd64\vcvarsamd64.bat</tt>" can be used for 64-bit builds on
Windows x64.</li>
<li>Unzip the icu-XXXX.zip file into any convenient location. Using command
line zip, type "unzip -a icu-XXXX.zip -d drive:\directory", or just use
WinZip.</li>
<li>Change directory to "icu/source", which is where you unzipped ICU.</li>
<li>Run "<tt>bash <a href="source/runConfigureICU">./runConfigureICU</a>
Cygwin/MSVC</tt>" (See <a href="#HowToWindowsConfigureICU">Windows
configuration note</a> and non-functional configure options below).</li>
<li>Type <tt>"make"</tt> to compile the libraries and all the data files.
This make command should be GNU make.</li>
<li>Optionally, type <tt>"make check"</tt> to run the test suite, which
checks for ICU's functionality integrity (See <a href=
"#HowToTestWithoutGmake">testing note</a> below).</li>
<li>Type <tt>"make install"</tt> to install ICU. If you used the --prefix=
option on configure or runConfigureICU, ICU will be installed to the
directory you specified. (See <a href="#HowToInstallICU">installation
note</a> below).</li>
</ol>
<p><a name="HowToWindowsConfigureICU" id=
"HowToWindowsConfigureICU"><strong>Configuring ICU on Windows
NOTE:</strong></a> In addition to the Unix <a href=
"#HowToConfigureICU">configuration note</a> the following configure options
currently do not work on Windows with Microsoft's compiler. Some options can
work by manually editing <tt>icu/source/common/unicode/pwin32.h</tt>, but
manually editing the files is not recommended.</p>
<ul>
<li><tt>--disable-renaming</tt></li>
<li><tt>--disable-threading</tt></li>
<li><tt>--enable-tracing</tt></li>
<li><tt>--enable-rpath</tt></li>
<li><tt>--with-iostream</tt></li>
<li><tt>--enable-static</tt> (Requires that U_STATIC_IMPLEMENTATION be
defined in user code that links against ICU's static libraries.)</li>
<li><tt>--with-data-packaging=files</tt> (The pkgdata tool currently does
not work in this mode. Manual packaging is required to use this mode.)</li>
</ul>
<h3><a name="HowToBuildUNIX" href="#HowToBuildUNIX" id="HowToBuildUNIX">How
To Build And Install On UNIX</a></h3>
<p>Building International Components for Unicode on UNIX requires:</p>
<ul>
<li>A C++ compiler installed on the target machine (for example: gcc, CC,
xlC_r, aCC, cxx, etc...).</li>
<li>An ANSI C compiler installed on the target machine (for example:
cc).</li>
<li>A recent version of GNU make (3.80+).</li>
<li>For a list of z/OS tools please view the <a href="#HowToBuildZOS">z/OS
build section</a> of this document for further details.</li>
</ul>
<p>Here are the steps to build ICU:</p>
<ol>
<li>Decompress the icu-<i>X</i>.<i>Y</i>.tgz (or
icu-<i>X</i>.<i>Y</i>.tar.gz) file. For example, <tt>"gunzip -d <
icu-<i>X</i>.<i>Y</i>.tgz | tar xvf -"</tt></li>
<li>Change directory to the "icu/source".</li>
<li>Run <tt>"chmod +x runConfigureICU configure install-sh"</tt> because
these files may have the wrong permissions.</li>
<li>Run the <tt><a href="source/runConfigureICU">runConfigureICU</a></tt>
script for your platform. (See <a href="#HowToConfigureICU">configuration
note</a> below).</li>
<li>Type <tt>"gmake"</tt> (or "make" if GNU make is the default make on
your platform) to compile the libraries and all the data files. The proper
name of the GNU make command is printed at the end of the configuration
run, as in "You must use gmake to compile ICU".</li>
<li>Optionally, type <tt>"gmake check"</tt> to run the test suite, which
checks for ICU's functionality integrity (See <a href=
"#HowToTestWithoutGmake">testing note</a> below).</li>
<li>Type <tt>"gmake install"</tt> to install ICU. If you used the --prefix=
option on configure or runConfigureICU, ICU will be installed to the
directory you specified. (See <a href="#HowToInstallICU">installation
note</a> below).</li>
</ol>
<p><a name="HowToConfigureICU" id="HowToConfigureICU"><strong>Configuring ICU
NOTE:</strong></a> Type <tt>"./runConfigureICU --help"</tt> for help on how
to run it and a list of supported platforms. You may also want to type
<tt>"./configure --help"</tt> 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 <tt>"./configure"</tt>. 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).
HP-UX user's, please see this <a href="#ImportantNotesHPUX">note regarding
HP-UX multithreaded build issues</a> with newer compilers. Solaris user's,
please see this <a href="#ImportantNotesSolaris">note regarding Solaris
multithreaded build issues</a>.</p>
<p><a name="HowToTestWithoutGmake" id="HowToTestWithoutGmake"><strong>Running
The Tests From The Command Line NOTE:</strong></a> You may have to set
certain variables if you with to run test programs individually, that is
apart from "gmake check". The environment variable <strong>ICU_DATA</strong>
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 <strong>ICU_DATA</strong> if the
complete shared data library is in your library path.</p>
<p><a name="HowToInstallICU" id="HowToInstallICU"><strong>Installing ICU
NOTE:</strong></a> 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 Subversion, 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).</p>
<h3><a name="HowToBuildZOS" href="#HowToBuildZOS" id="HowToBuildZOS">How To
Build And Install On z/OS (OS/390)</a></h3>
<p>You can install ICU on z/OS or OS/390 (the previous name of z/OS), but IBM
tests only the z/OS installation. 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:</p>
<ul>
<li>The makedep and GNU make tools are required for building ICU. If it
is not already installed on your system, it is available at the <a href=
"http://www.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/zos/unix/redbook/">z/OS UNIX -
Tools and Toys</a> site. The PATH environment variable should be updated to
contain the location of this executable prior to build. Failure to add these
tools to your PATH will cause ICU build failures or cause pkgdata to fail
to run.</li>
<li>Since USS does not support using the mmap() function over NFS, it is
recommended that you build ICU on a local filesystem. Once ICU has been
built, you should not have this problem while using ICU when the data
library has been built as a shared library, which is this is the default
setting.</li>
<li>Encoding considerations: The source code assumes that it is compiled
with codepage ibm-1047 (to be exact, the UNIX System Services variant of
it). The pax command converts all of the source code files from ASCII to
codepage ibm-1047 (USS) EBCDIC. However, some files are binary files and
must not be converted, or must be converted back to their original state.
You can use the <a href="as_is/os390/unpax-icu.sh">unpax-icu.sh</a> script
to do this for you automatically. It will unpackage the tar file and
convert all the necessary files for you automatically.</li>
<li>z/OS supports both native S/390 hexadecimal floating point and (with
OS/390 2.6 and later) IEEE 754 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=0 will
cause the z/OS version of ICU to be built without IEEE floating point
support and use the native hexadecimal floating point. By default ICU is
built with IEEE 754 support. Native floating point support is sufficient
for codepage conversion, resource bundle and UnicodeString operations, but
the Format APIs require IEEE binary floating point.</li>
<li>z/OS introduced the concept of Extra Performance Linkage (XPLINK) to
bring performance improvement opportunities to call-intensive C and C++
applications such as ICU. XPLINK is enabled on a DLL-by-DLL basis, so if
you are considering using XPLINK in your application that uses ICU, you
should consider building the XPLINK-enabled version of ICU. You need to
set ICU's environment variable <code>OS390_XPLINK=1</code> prior to
invoking the make process to produce binaries that are enabled for
XPLINK. The XPLINK option, which is available for z/OS 1.2 and later,
requires the PTF PQ69418 to build XPLINK enabled binaries.</li>
<li>Currently in ICU 3.0, there is an issue with building on z/OS without
XPLINK and with the C++ iostream. By default, the iostream library on z/OS
is XPLINK enabled. If you are not building an XPLINK enabled version of
ICU, you should use the <code>--with-iostream=old</code> configure option
when using runConfigureICU. This will prevent applications that use the
icuio library from crashing.</li>
<li>The rest of the instructions for building and testing ICU on z/OS with
UNIX System Services are the same as the <a href="#HowToBuildUNIX">How To
Build And Install On UNIX</a> section.</li>
</ul>
<h4>z/OS (Batch/PDS) support outside the UNIX system services
environment</h4>
<p>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).</p>
<p>The OS390BATCH environment variable enables non-UNIX support including the
batch environment. When OS390BATCH is set, the libicui18n<i>XX</i>.dll,
libicuuc<i>XX</i>.dll, and libicudt<i>XX</i>e.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 z/OS UNIX (HFS) DLLs will
always be created.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Here is an example of some environment variables that you can set prior to
building ICU:</p>
<pre>
<samp>OS390BATCH=1
LOADMOD=<i>USER</i>.ICU.LOAD
LOADEXP=<i>USER</i>.ICU.EXP</samp>
</pre>
<p>The PDS member names for the DLL file names are as follows:</p>
<pre>
<samp>IXMI<i>XX</i>IN --> libicui18n<i>XX</i>.dll
IXMI<i>XX</i>UC --> libicuuc<i>XX</i>.dll
IXMI<i>XX</i>DA --> libicudt<i>XX</i>e.dll</samp>
</pre>
<p>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:</p>
<pre>
<samp>Data Set Name . . . : <i>USER</i>.ICU.LOAD
Management class. . : <i>**None**</i>
Storage class . . . : <i>BASE</i>
Volume serial . . . : <i>TSO007</i>
Device type . . . . : <i>3390</i>
Data class. . . . . : <i>LOAD</i>
Organization . . . : PO
Record format . . . : U
Record length . . . : 0
Block size . . . . : <i>32760</i>
1st extent cylinders: 1
Secondary cylinders : 5
Data set name type : LIBRARY</samp>
</pre>
<p>The PDS can be allocated with the following attributes:</p>
<pre>
<samp>Data Set Name . . . : <i>USER</i>.ICU.EXP
Management class. . : <i>**None**</i>
Storage class . . . : <i>BASE</i>
Volume serial . . . : <i>TSO007</i>
Device type . . . . : <i>3390</i>
Data class. . . . . : <i>**None**</i>
Organization . . . : PO
Record format . . . : FB
Record length . . . : 80
Block size . . . . : <i>3200</i>
1st extent cylinders: 3
Secondary cylinders : 3
Data set name type : PDS</samp>
</pre>
<h3><a name="HowToBuildOS400" href="#HowToBuildOS400" id=
"HowToBuildOS400">How To Build And Install On The IBM i Family (IBM i, i5/OS OS/400)</a></h3>
<p>Before you start building ICU, ICU requires the following:</p>
<ul>
<li>QSHELL interpreter installed (install base option 30, operating system)
<!--li>QShell Utilities, PRPQ 5799-XEH (not required for V4R5)</li--></li>
<li>ILE C/C++ Compiler installed on the system
<li>The latest GNU facilities (You can get the GNU facilities
from <a href=
"http://www.ibm.com/servers/enable/site/porting/iseries/overview/gnu_utilities.html">
http://www.ibm.com/servers/enable/site/porting/iseries/overview/gnu_utilities.html</a>).
Older versions may not work properly.</li>
</ul>
<p>The following describes how to setup and build ICU. For background
information, you should look at the <a href="#HowToBuildUNIX">UNIX build
instructions</a>.</p>
<ol>
<li>
Create target library. This library will be the target for the
resulting modules, programs and service programs. You will specify this
library on the OUTPUTDIR environment variable.
<pre>
<samp>CRTLIB LIB(<i>libraryname</i>)
ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(OUTPUTDIR) VALUE('<i>libraryname</i>')</samp>
</pre>
</li>
<li>
Set up the following environment variables and job characteristics in your build process
<pre>
<samp>ADDENVVAR ENVVAR(MAKE) VALUE('/usr/bin/gmake')
CHGJOB CCSID(37)</samp>
</pre>
<li>Run <tt>'QSH'</tt></li>
<li>Run gunzip on the ICU source code compressed tar archive
(icu-<i>X</i>.<i>Y</i>.tgz).</li>
<li>Run unpax-icu.sh on the tar file generated from the previous step.</li>
<li>Change your current directory to icu/source.</li>
<li>Run <tt>'./runConfigureICU IBMi'</tt> (See <a href="#HowToConfigureICU">configuration
note</a> for details).</li></li>
<li>Run <tt>'gmake'</tt> to build ICU.</li>
<li>Run <tt>'gmake check QIBM_MULTI_THREADED=Y'</tt> to build and run the tests.
You can look at the <a href=
"http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v5r3/index.jsp?topic=/apis/concept4.htm">
iSeries Information Center</a> for more details regarding the running of multiple threads
on IBM i.</li>
</ol>
<!-- end build environment -->
<h2><a name="HowToPackage" href="#HowToPackage" id="HowToPackage">How To
Package ICU</a></h2>
<p>There are many ways that a person can package ICU with their software
products. Usually only the libraries need to be considered for packaging.</p>
<p>On UNIX, you should use "<tt>gmake install</tt>" 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 "<tt>--prefix=</tt><i>dir</i>" configure option (See the <a href=
"#HowToBuildUNIX">UNIX build instructions</a>). When ICU is built on Windows,
a similar directory structure is built.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<ol>
<li>Add a suffix name to the library names. This can be done with the
--with-library-suffix configure option.</li>
<li>The installation script should install the ICU libraries into the
application's directory.</li>
</ol>
<p>Following these guidelines prevents other applications that use a standard
ICU distribution from conflicting with 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 <a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/">User's Guide</a>. The <a href=
"#SourceCode">ICU Source Code Organization</a> section of this readme.html
gives a more complete description of the libraries.</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="3" summary=
"ICU has several libraries for you to use.">
<caption>
Here is an example of libraries that are frequently packaged.
</caption>
<tr>
<th scope="col">Library Name</th>
<th scope="col">Windows Filename</th>
<th scope="col">Linux Filename</th>
<th scope="col">Comment</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Data Library</td>
<td>icudt<i>XY</i>l.dll</td>
<td>libicudata.so.<i>XY</i>.<i>Z</i></td>
<td>Data required by the Common and I18n libraries. There are many ways
to package and <a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/icudata.html">customize this
data</a>, but by default this is all you need.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Common Library</td>
<td>icuuc<i>XY</i>.dll</td>
<td>libicuuc.so.<i>XY</i>.<i>Z</i></td>
<td>Base library required by all other ICU libraries.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Internationalization (i18n) Library</td>
<td>icuin<i>XY</i>.dll</td>
<td>libicui18n.so.<i>XY</i>.<i>Z</i></td>
<td>A library that contains many locale based internationalization (i18n)
functions.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Layout Engine</td>
<td>icule<i>XY</i>.dll</td>
<td>libicule.so.<i>XY</i>.<i>Z</i></td>
<td>An optional engine for doing font layout.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Layout Extensions Engine</td>
<td>iculx<i>XY</i>.dll</td>
<td>libiculx.so.<i>XY</i>.<i>Z</i></td>
<td>An optional engine for doing font layout that uses parts of ICU.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ICU I/O (Unicode stdio) Library</td>
<td>icuio<i>XY</i>.dll</td>
<td>libicuio.so.<i>XY</i>.<i>Z</i></td>
<td>An optional library that provides a stdio like API with Unicode
support.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tool Utility Library</td>
<td>icutu<i>XY</i>.dll</td>
<td>libicutu.so.<i>XY</i>.<i>Z</i></td>
<td>An internal library that contains internal APIs that are only used by
ICU's tools. If you do not use ICU's tools, you do not need this
library.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>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 <i>X</i>, <i>Y</i> and <i>Z</i> 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.</p>
<h2><a name="ImportantNotes" href="#ImportantNotes" id=
"ImportantNotes">Important Notes About Using ICU</a></h2>
<h3><a name="ImportantNotesMultithreaded" href="#ImportantNotesMultithreaded"
id="ImportantNotesMultithreaded">Using ICU in a Multithreaded
Environment</a></h3>
<p>Some versions of ICU require calling the <code>u_init()</code> function
from <code>uclean.h</code> to ensure that ICU is initialized properly. In
those ICU versions, <code>u_init()</code> must be called before ICU is used
from multiple threads. There is no harm in calling <code>u_init()</code> in a
single-threaded application, on a single-CPU machine, or in other cases where
<code>u_init()</code> is not required.</p>
<p>In addition to ensuring thread safety, <code>u_init()</code> also attempts
to load at least one ICU data file. Assuming that all data files are packaged
together (or are in the same folder in files mode), a failure code from
<code>u_init()</code> usually means that the data cannot be found. In this
case, the data may not be installed properly, or the application may have
failed to call <code>udata_setCommonData()</code> or
<code>u_setDataDirectory()</code> which specify to ICU where it can find its
data.</p>
<p>Since <code>u_init()</code> will load only one or two data files, it
cannot guarantee that all of the data that an application needs is available.
It cannot check for all data files because the set of files is customizable,
and some ICU services work without loading any data at all. An application
should always check for error codes when opening ICU service objects (using
<code>ucnv_open()</code>, <code>ucol_open()</code>, C++ constructors,
etc.).</p>
<h4>ICU 3.4 and later</h4>
<p>ICU 3.4 self-initializes properly for multi-threaded use. It achieves this
without performance penalty by hardcoding the core Unicode properties data,
at the cost of some flexibility. (For details see Jitterbug 4497.)</p>
<p><code>u_init()</code> can be used to check for data loading. It tries to
load the converter alias table (<code>cnvalias.icu</code>).</p>
<h4>ICU 2.6..3.2</h4>
<p>These ICU versions require a call to <code>u_init()</code> before
multi-threaded use. The services that are directly affected are those that
don't have a service object and need to be fast: normalization and character
properties.</p>
<p><code>u_init()</code> loads and initializes the data files for
normalization and character properties (<code>unorm.icu</code> and
<code>uprops.icu</code>) and can therefore also be used to check for data
loading.</p>
<h4>ICU 2.4 and earlier</h4>
<p>ICU 2.4 and earlier versions were not prepared for multithreaded use on
multi-CPU platforms where the CPUs implement weak memory coherency. These
CPUs include: Power4, Power5, Alpha, Itanium. <code>u_init()</code> was not
defined yet.</p>
<h4><a name="ImportantNotesHPUX" href="#ImportantNotesHPUX" id=
"ImportantNotesHPUX">Using ICU in a Multithreaded Environment on
HP-UX</a></h4>
<p>If you are building ICU with a newer aCC compiler and you are planning on
using the older <iostream.h> instead of the newer <iostream>, you
will need to use a special configure flag before building ICU. By default,
the aCC <a href="http://docs.hp.com/en/1405/options.htm#optioncap-AA">-AA</a>
flag is used on HP-UX when the compiler supports that option in order to make
ICU thread safe with RogueWave and other libraries using the 2.0 Standard C++
library. Your applications that use ICU will also need to use the <a href=
"http://docs.hp.com/en/1405/options.htm#optioncap-AA">-AA</a> compiler flag.
To turn off this behavior in ICU, you will need to use the --with-iostream=old
configure option when you first use runConfigureICU.</p>
<h4><a name="ImportantNotesSolaris" href="#ImportantNotesSolaris" id=
"ImportantNotesSolaris">Using ICU in a Multithreaded Environment on
Solaris</a></h4>
<h5>Linking on Solaris</h5>
<p>In order to avoid synchronization and threading issues, developers are
<strong>suggested</strong> to strictly follow the compiling and linking
guidelines for multithreaded applications, specified in the following
document from Sun Microsystems. Most notably, pay strict attention to the
following statements from Sun:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To use libthread, specify -lthread before -lc on the ld command line, or
last on the cc command line.</p>
<p>To use libpthread, specify -lpthread before -lc on the ld command line,
or last on the cc command line.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Failure to do this may cause spurious lock conflicts, recursive mutex
failure, and deadlock.</p>
<p>Source: "<i>Solaris Multithreaded Programming Guide, Compiling and
Debugging</i>", Sun Microsystems, Inc., Apr 2004<br />
<a href=
"http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5137/6mba5vpke?a=view">http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816-5137/6mba5vpke?a=view</a></p>
<h3><a name="ImportantNotesWindows" href="#ImportantNotesWindows" id=
"ImportantNotesWindows">Windows Platform</a></h3>
<p>If you are building on the Win32 platform, it is important that you
understand a few of the following build details.</p>
<h4>DLL directories and the PATH setting</h4>
<p>As delivered, the International Components for Unicode build as several
DLLs, which are placed in the "<i><ICU></i>\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.</p>
<h4><a name="ImportantNotesWindowsPath" id=
"ImportantNotesWindowsPath">Changing your PATH</a></h4>
<p><strong>Windows 2000/XP</strong>: Use the System Icon in the Control
Panel. Pick the "Advanced" tab. Select the "Environment Variables..."
button. Select the variable PATH in the lower box, and select the lower
"Edit..." button. In the "Variable Value" box, append the string
";<i><ICU></i>\bin" to the end of the path string. If there is
nothing there, just type in "<i><ICU></i>\bin". Click the Set button,
then the OK button.</p>
<p>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 <a href=
"http://msdn.microsoft.com/">msdn.microsoft.com</a>.</p>
<h3><a name="ImportantNotesUNIX" href="#ImportantNotesUNIX" id=
"ImportantNotesUNIX">UNIX Type Platform</a></h3>
<p>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 <strong>LD_LIBRARY_PATH</strong> or <strong>LIBPATH</strong>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2><a name="PlatformDependencies" href="#PlatformDependencies" id=
"PlatformDependencies">Platform Dependencies</a></h2>
<h3><a name="PlatformDependenciesNew" href="#PlatformDependenciesNew" id=
"PlatformDependenciesNew">Porting To A New Platform</a></h3>
<p>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 <a href=
"http://www.icu-project.org/contacts.html">icu-support mailing list</a>. Once
you have finished porting ICU to a new platform, it is recommended that you
contribute your changes back to ICU via the icu-support mailing list. This
will make it easier for everyone to benefit from your work.</p>
<h4>Data For a New Platform</h4>
<p>For some people, it may not be necessary for completely build ICU. Most of
the makefiles and build targets are for tools that are used for building
ICU's data, and an application's data (when an application uses ICU resource
bundles for its data).</p>
<p>Data files can be built on a different platform when both platforms share
the same endianness and the same charset family. This assertion does not
include platform dependent DLLs/shared/static libraries. For details see the
User Guide <a href="http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/icudata.html">ICU
Data</a> chapter.</p>
<p>ICU 3.6 removes the requirement that ICU be completely built in the native
operating environment. It adds the icupkg tool which can be run on any
platform to turn binary ICU data files from any one of the three formats into
any one of the other data formats. This allows a application to use ICU data
built anywhere to be used for any other target platform.</p>
<p><strong>WARNING!</strong> Building ICU without running the tests is not
recommended. The tests verify that ICU is safe to use. It is recommended that
you try to completely port and test ICU before using the libraries for your
own application.</p>
<h4>Adapting Makefiles For a New Platform</h4>
<p>Try to follow the build steps from the <a href="#HowToBuildUNIX">UNIX</a>
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:<br />
</p>
<ol>
<li>Create an mh file in icu/source/config/. You can use mh-linux or a
similar mh file as your base configuration.</li>
<li>Modify icu/source/aclocal.m4 to recognize your platform's mh file.</li>
<li>Modify icu/source/configure.in to properly set your <b>platform</b> C
Macro define.</li>
<li>Run <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/">autoconf</a> in
icu/source/ without any options. The autoconf tool is standard on most
Linux systems.</li>
<li>If you have any optimization options that you want to normally use, you
can modify icu/source/runConfigureICU to specify those options for your
platform.</li>
<li>Build and test ICU on your platform. It is very important that you run
the tests. If you don't run the tests, there is no guarentee that you have
properly ported ICU.</li>
</ol>
<h3><a name="PlatformDependenciesImpl" href="#PlatformDependenciesImpl" id=
"PlatformDependenciesImpl">Platform Dependent Implementations</a></h3>
<p>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.</p>
<ul>
<li>
<strong>unicode/platform.h.in</strong> (autoconf'ed platforms)<br />
<strong>unicode/p<i>XXXX</i>.h</strong> (others: pwin32.h, ppalmos.h,
..): Platform-dependent typedefs and defines:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Generic types like UBool, int8_t, int16_t, int32_t, int64_t,
uint64_t etc.</li>
<li>U_EXPORT and U_IMPORT for specifying dynamic library import and
export</li>
<li><iostream> usability</li>
<li>Thread safety usability</li>
</ul>
<br />
</li>
<li>
<strong>unicode/putil.h, putil.c</strong>: platform-dependent
implementations of various functions that are platform dependent:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>uprv_isNaN, uprv_isInfinite, uprv_getNaN and uprv_getInfinity for
handling special floating point values.</li>
<li>uprv_tzset, uprv_timezone, uprv_tzname and time for getting
platform specific time and time zone information.</li>
<li>u_getDataDirectory for getting the default data directory.</li>
<li>uprv_getDefaultLocaleID for getting the default locale
setting.</li>
<li>uprv_getDefaultCodepage for getting the default codepage
encoding.</li>
</ul>
<br />
</li>
<li>
<strong>umutex.h, umutex.c</strong>: Code for doing synchronization in
multithreaded applications. If you wish to use International Components
for Unicode in a multithreaded application, you must provide a
synchronization primitive that the classes can use to protect their
global data against simultaneous modifications. We already supply working
implementations for many platforms that ICU builds on.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li><strong>umapfile.h, umapfile.c</strong>: functions for mapping or
otherwise reading or loading files into memory. All access by ICU to data
from files makes use of these functions.<br />
<br />
</li>
<li>Using platform specific #ifdef macros are highly discouraged outside of
the scope of these files. When the source code gets updated in the future,
these #ifdef's can cause testing problems for your platform.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
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others. All Rights Reserved.<br />
IBM Globalization Center of Competency - San José<br />
4400 North First Street<br />
San José, CA 95134<br />
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