|
There are three mailing lists related to FreeType.
- freetype@nongnu.org
Discusses general use and applications of FreeType, as well as
future and wanted additions to the library and distribution. If you
are looking for support, start in this list if you haven't found
anything to help you in the documentation.
- freetype-devel@nongnu.org
Discusses engine internals, design issues, specific licenses,
porting, etc. Mainly for software developers.
- freetype-announce@nongnu.org
Only contains important announcements related to the project, like
releases, milestones, etc. Only the FreeType team can post to this
list.
To subscribe to one of them use one of the methods below.
-
Savannah's web interface to the mailing lists. Have a look at
-
By e-mail, using a -request suffix to send a message to
one of the mailing lists, with subscribe in the subject
line. Here are direct links.
You can use a similar method to unsubscribe, by using
unsubscribe in the subject line. Here are direct
links.
Finally, use the word help in the subject line if you
want to receive an automatic answer detailing all available
options through e-mail.
When joining, you will receive a confirmation request by e-mail; it
will also contain the address of a specific web page you can use to to
change your account settings, for example to unsubscribe.
Note that mailing archives provided through the Mailman web
interface are searchable.
There are several ways to access the source code for the FreeType
packages.
-
Download a source archive
then browse, compile, and use the source locally as you like.
-
Use the cgit
page
It will let you view our source code and the changes that occurred
lately.
-
Use git access
The complete FreeType repositories can be downloaded using git.
Enter these commands for anonymous read-only access of the
repositories:
git clone
git://git.sv.nongnu.org/freetype/freetype2.git
git clone
git://git.sv.nongnu.org/freetype/freetype2-demos.git
If you are behind a Firewall which disables port 9418, you
might try the HTTP protocol:
git clone
http://git.sv.nongnu.org/r/freetype/freetype2.git
git clone
http://git.sv.nongnu.org/r/freetype/freetype2-demos.git
Please read
for more details on the git setup of Savannah (for example, how
to check out the git repositories with a CVS client, if
necessary).
-
Use anonymous CVS access
Other, no longer
maintained FreeType repositories which exist for historical
interest only can be downloaded through CVS. Use the following
value for the CVSROOT environment variable (or the
equivalent -d command line option of the cvs client):
:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sv.nongnu.org:/sources/freetype
When asked for a password, simply press Enter for cvs
login. The module names are freetype (Freetype
version 1.x, C code), freetype1-contrib
(contributed programs), and ftpascal (Freetype
version 1.x, Pascal code).
The freetype2 and ft2demos modules have been
transformed to git (see above) and shouldn't be used anymore.
One of the simplest way to compile FreeType 2 is from the
command line using one of the following tools.
GNU Make
FreeType 2 comes with a sophisticated build system that is
based on GNU Make. This really means a set of Makefiles and
sub-Makefiles that are used to perform the following operations.
-
Detect the current operating system in order to select the
appropriate default compiler settings for the build.
-
Select the settings corresponding to a given compiler for a given
platform. For example, on Windows, the following compilers are
supported: Visual C++, GCC, Borland C++, Watcom C++, Win32-LCC.
On Unix, gcc, lcc and standard cc are also supported through a
traditional configure script.
-
Build the list of FreeType 2 modules automatically from the
sub-directories present in the src directory.
-
Finally, build the library and its module as a static library or
DLL, depending on the platform and compiler.
The build system is capable of supporting several compilers, on
several platforms. However, you must have a recent version of
GNU Make installed to use it. The build does not work with
other make tools (like BSD Make, NMake, etc.).
See the download section for binaries
of GNU Make for Windows.
FT Jam
Unfortunately, the GNU Make-based build system described above is
rather complex due to various technical reasons, one of them being the
really weird syntax used in Makefiles. Since release 2.0.2,
the FreeType library can also be created with an alternative build
tool named Jam.
Briefly, Jam is a small, efficient, portable and open-source
replacement for make that is both a lot easier to use and
more powerful!
-
Jam control files (named Jamfiles) are portable among
platforms and compilers and thus do not need to be edited for each
specific build (unlike the ugly Makefile.in trick used
commonly on Unix).
-
The syntax of Jamfiles is simple, expressive and allows you to
define your own functions.
-
Jam performs lots of nifty things for you, like automatic header
dependencies computations.
-
Jam only does project builds, it is not a configuration tool and
is trivially compatible with Autoconf on Unix.
Find more information on the FT Jam
page.
In case you find a bug which you think is related to FreeType,
please check the problematic font with one of our demo programs, for
example ftview or ftstring. In case the problem
persists, go to the Savannah bug
database for FreeType, check whether the problem has been reported
already. Otherwise, please submit a bug report. It might be useful
to use the git version (see above) of FreeType for testing since we
don't release FreeType very often.
|
