editline/README

README                                          -*-text-*-

This is a line-editing library.  It can be linked into almost any program to
provide command-line editing and history.

It is call-compatible with the FSF readline library, but it is a fraction of
the size (and offers fewer features).  It does not use standard I/O.  It is
distributed under a "C News-like" copyright, see the file LICENSE for
details.

Configuration is made by supplying different options to the GNU configure
script.  In the examples/ directory you can find a couple of small & slow
shell implementations used for testing.

Before finding out about the Debian version I was on the lookout for a
really small replacement for the GNU readline package. Not only was it large
and GPL:ed (instead of LGPL:ed), it also depended on libncurses, so the
resulting size was a bit too much for my embedded system.  I eventually
stubmled upon the BSD libedit library, which was sufficient for a while,
even though it too depended upon libncurses.  I searched my soul and went
back to where I, back in 1996, started out -- Minix.  And there it was, a
really small readline replacement!

In 2000 Jim Studt packaged libeditline for Debian[1], the exact origin of
the Debian code base is unclear, see the Sid package[2] for details. There
were some notable differences between that version and the upstream Minix
sources, all of which have now been merged here.

An explanation of the version numbering may be in order.  I didn't know
about the Debian version for quite some time, so I kept a different name for
the package and a different versioning scheme. Now, in June 2009, I decided
to line up alongside Debian, with the intent of merging the efforts.  Sorry
for any confusion this might cause.

Enjoy,
	Joachim Nilsson <joachim.nilsson@vmlinux.org>

[1] - http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2000/05/msg00548.html
[2] - http://packages.debian.org/sid/libeditline0