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 some small code snippets
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 libreadline large
and GPL:ed (instead of LGPL:ed), it also depends on libncurses, 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
depends on 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.  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 <troglobit()vmlinux!org>

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