1[](https://travis-ci.org/libexpat/libexpat) 2[](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/libexpat/libexpat) 3[](https://repology.org/metapackage/expat/versions) 4 5 6# Expat, Release 2.2.9 7 8This is Expat, a C library for parsing XML, started by 9[James Clark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clark_(programmer)) in 1997. 10Expat is a stream-oriented XML parser. This means that you register 11handlers with the parser before starting the parse. These handlers 12are called when the parser discovers the associated structures in the 13document being parsed. A start tag is an example of the kind of 14structures for which you may register handlers. 15 16Expat supports the following compilers: 17- GNU GCC >=4.5 18- LLVM Clang >=3.5 19- Microsoft Visual Studio >=8.0/2005 20 21Windows users should use the 22[`expat_win32` package](https://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/files/expat_win32/), 23which includes both precompiled libraries and executables, and source code for 24developers. 25 26Expat is [free software](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html). 27You may copy, distribute, and modify it under the terms of the License 28contained in the file 29[`COPYING`](https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/blob/master/expat/COPYING) 30distributed with this package. 31This license is the same as the MIT/X Consortium license. 32 33If you are building Expat from a check-out from the 34[Git repository](https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat/), 35you need to run a script that generates the configure script using the 36GNU autoconf and libtool tools. To do this, you need to have 37autoconf 2.58 or newer. Run the script like this: 38 39```console 40./buildconf.sh 41``` 42 43Once this has been done, follow the same instructions as for building 44from a source distribution. 45 46To build Expat from a source distribution, you first run the 47configuration shell script in the top level distribution directory: 48 49```console 50./configure 51``` 52 53There are many options which you may provide to configure (which you 54can discover by running configure with the `--help` option). But the 55one of most interest is the one that sets the installation directory. 56By default, the configure script will set things up to install 57libexpat into `/usr/local/lib`, `expat.h` into `/usr/local/include`, and 58`xmlwf` into `/usr/local/bin`. If, for example, you'd prefer to install 59into `/home/me/mystuff/lib`, `/home/me/mystuff/include`, and 60`/home/me/mystuff/bin`, you can tell `configure` about that with: 61 62```console 63./configure --prefix=/home/me/mystuff 64``` 65 66Another interesting option is to enable 64-bit integer support for 67line and column numbers and the over-all byte index: 68 69```console 70./configure CPPFLAGS=-DXML_LARGE_SIZE 71``` 72 73However, such a modification would be a breaking change to the ABI 74and is therefore not recommended for general use — e.g. as part of 75a Linux distribution — but rather for builds with special requirements. 76 77After running the configure script, the `make` command will build 78things and `make install` will install things into their proper 79location. Have a look at the `Makefile` to learn about additional 80`make` options. Note that you need to have write permission into 81the directories into which things will be installed. 82 83If you are interested in building Expat to provide document 84information in UTF-16 encoding rather than the default UTF-8, follow 85these instructions (after having run `make distclean`). 86Please note that we configure with `--without-xmlwf` as xmlwf does not 87support this mode of compilation (yet): 88 891. Mass-patch `Makefile.am` files to use `libexpatw.la` for a library name: 90 <br/> 91 `find -name Makefile.am -exec sed 92 -e 's,libexpat\.la,libexpatw.la,' 93 -e 's,libexpat_la,libexpatw_la,' 94 -i {} +` 95 961. Run `automake` to re-write `Makefile.in` files:<br/> 97 `automake` 98 991. For UTF-16 output as unsigned short (and version/error strings as char), 100 run:<br/> 101 `./configure CPPFLAGS=-DXML_UNICODE --without-xmlwf`<br/> 102 For UTF-16 output as `wchar_t` (incl. version/error strings), run:<br/> 103 `./configure CFLAGS="-g -O2 -fshort-wchar" CPPFLAGS=-DXML_UNICODE_WCHAR_T 104 --without-xmlwf` 105 <br/>Note: The latter requires libc compiled with `-fshort-wchar`, as well. 106 1071. Run `make` (which excludes xmlwf). 108 1091. Run `make install` (again, excludes xmlwf). 110 111Using `DESTDIR` is supported. It works as follows: 112 113```console 114make install DESTDIR=/path/to/image 115``` 116 117overrides the in-makefile set `DESTDIR`, because variable-setting priority is 118 1191. commandline 1201. in-makefile 1211. environment 122 123Note: This only applies to the Expat library itself, building UTF-16 versions 124of xmlwf and the tests is currently not supported. 125 126When using Expat with a project using autoconf for configuration, you 127can use the probing macro in `conftools/expat.m4` to determine how to 128include Expat. See the comments at the top of that file for more 129information. 130 131A reference manual is available in the file `doc/reference.html` in this 132distribution. 133 134 135The CMake build system is still *experimental* and will replace the primary 136build system based on GNU Autotools at some point when it is ready. 137For an idea of the available (non-advanced) options for building with CMake: 138 139```console 140# rm -f CMakeCache.txt ; cmake -D_EXPAT_HELP=ON -LH . | grep -B1 ':.*=' | sed 's,^--$,,' 141// Choose the type of build, options are: None Debug Release RelWithDebInfo MinSizeRel ... 142CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING= 143 144// Install path prefix, prepended onto install directories. 145CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr/local 146 147// Path to a program. 148DOCBOOK_TO_MAN:FILEPATH=/usr/bin/docbook2x-man 149 150// build man page for xmlwf 151EXPAT_BUILD_DOCS:BOOL=ON 152 153// build the examples for expat library 154EXPAT_BUILD_EXAMPLES:BOOL=ON 155 156// build fuzzers for the expat library 157EXPAT_BUILD_FUZZERS:BOOL=OFF 158 159// build the tests for expat library 160EXPAT_BUILD_TESTS:BOOL=ON 161 162// build the xmlwf tool for expat library 163EXPAT_BUILD_TOOLS:BOOL=ON 164 165// Character type to use (char|ushort|wchar_t) [default=char] 166EXPAT_CHAR_TYPE:STRING=char 167 168// install expat files in cmake install target 169EXPAT_ENABLE_INSTALL:BOOL=ON 170 171// Use /MT flag (static CRT) when compiling in MSVC 172EXPAT_MSVC_STATIC_CRT:BOOL=OFF 173 174// build a shared expat library 175EXPAT_SHARED_LIBS:BOOL=ON 176 177// Treat all compiler warnings as errors 178EXPAT_WARNINGS_AS_ERRORS:BOOL=OFF 179 180// Make use of getrandom function (ON|OFF|AUTO) [default=AUTO] 181EXPAT_WITH_GETRANDOM:STRING=AUTO 182 183// utilize libbsd (for arc4random_buf) 184EXPAT_WITH_LIBBSD:BOOL=OFF 185 186// Make use of syscall SYS_getrandom (ON|OFF|AUTO) [default=AUTO] 187EXPAT_WITH_SYS_GETRANDOM:STRING=AUTO 188``` 189
){kind=link}
){kind=link}