README for upmf
***************

Copyright (C) 2012 Aljosha Papsch <papsch.al@googlemail.com>

   Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.  This file is offered as-is,
without warranty of any kind.

Table Of Contents
=================

  1. Features
  2. Installation
  3. Dependencies
  4. Acquiring package files
  5. Licensing

Features
========

   Upmf is a package manager, uniting the good things of two other source
based package managers, Gentoo's Portage and Paldo's Upkg, and adding some
own ideas:

  * Package specification files: Upmf uses an advanced XML format, derived
    from Upkg's XML format.  Upmf strives to keep compatibility with Upkg's
    package files, thus giving access to Paldo's growing repository.
  * Attributes in package file: Provide information about URI of source,
    description and licensing.
  * USE flags: The user can customize the features of a package.  If a USE
    flag is enabled, the feature will be built, otherwise not.
  * Build types: Provide predefined ways to build a package.  This avoids
    massive duplication of the same lines (./configure && ...) like in
    Upkg's package files.
  * Sections: Give packages a namespace.  This is much like the first part
    in Gentoo package names, e.g. dev-lang in dev-lang/vala.
  * Installation of a package: Upmf uses GNU Stow for installation of
    packages.  In contrast, Portage installs a package to a special
    install directory, creates an archive from that and then extracts that
    archive in the root file system.  Upmf + Stow should be faster here,
    especially on big-sized packages.

Installation
============

Please see the file INSTALL for detailed installation information.

Dependencies
============

libxml-2.0 >= 2.8.0 http://xmlsoft.org/ Expat license

Acquiring package files
=======================

   Currently, there are no package files available for Upmf.  You can
find a draft file in this distribution though (data/ktorrent.xml). It
is commented from head to foot and gets installed by make install. I
chose KTorrent because you can make a rather complex package file for it.

Licensing
=========

   Upmf is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
   
   Upmf is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
   
   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with Upmf.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
