1 This is the README for the source archive of PuTTY, a free Win32
2 and Unix Telnet and SSH client.
4 If you want to rebuild PuTTY from source, we provide a variety of
5 Makefiles and equivalents. (If you have fetched the source from
6 Git, you'll have to generate the Makefiles yourself -- see
9 There are various compile-time directives that you can use to
10 disable or modify certain features; it may be necessary to do this
11 in some environments. They are documented in `Recipe', and in
12 comments in many of the generated Makefiles.
14 For building on Windows:
16 - windows/Makefile.vc is for command-line builds on MS Visual C++
17 systems. Change into the `windows' subdirectory and type `nmake
18 -f Makefile.vc' to build all the PuTTY binaries.
20 As of 2017, we successfully compile PuTTY with both Visual Studio
21 7 (2003) and Visual Studio 14 (2015), so our guess is that it will
22 probably build with versions in between those as well.
24 (The binaries from Visual Studio 14 are only compatible with
25 Windows XP and up. Binaries from Visual Studio 7 ought to work
26 with anything from Windows 95 onward.)
28 - Inside the windows/MSVC subdirectory are MS Visual Studio project
29 files for doing GUI-based builds of the various PuTTY utilities.
30 These have been tested on Visual Studio 7 and 10.
32 You should be able to build each PuTTY utility by loading the
33 corresponding .dsp file in Visual Studio. For example,
34 MSVC/putty/putty.dsp builds PuTTY itself, MSVC/plink/plink.dsp
35 builds Plink, and so on.
37 - windows/Makefile.bor is for the Borland C compiler. Type `make -f
38 Makefile.bor' while in the `windows' subdirectory to build all
41 - windows/Makefile.mgw is for MinGW / Cygwin installations. Type
42 `make -f Makefile.mgw' while in the `windows' subdirectory to
43 build all the PuTTY binaries.
45 MinGW and friends can lag behind other toolchains in their support
46 for the Windows API. Compile-time levers are provided to exclude
47 some features; the defaults are set appropriately for the
48 'mingw-w64' cross-compiler provided with Ubuntu 14.04. If you are
49 using an older toolchain, you may need to exclude more features;
50 alternatively, you may find that upgrading to a recent version of
51 the 'w32api' package helps.
53 - windows/Makefile.lcc is for lcc-win32. Type `make -f
54 Makefile.lcc' while in the `windows' subdirectory. (You will
55 probably need to specify COMPAT=-DNO_MULTIMON.)
57 - Inside the windows/DEVCPP subdirectory are Dev-C++ project
58 files for doing GUI-based builds of the various PuTTY utilities.
60 The PuTTY team actively use Makefile.vc (with VC7/10) and Makefile.mgw
61 (with mingw32), so we'll probably notice problems with those
62 toolchains fairly quickly. Please report any problems with the other
63 toolchains mentioned above.
67 - unix/configure is for Unix and GTK. If you don't have GTK, you
68 should still be able to build the command-line utilities (PSCP,
69 PSFTP, Plink, PuTTYgen) using this script. To use it, change into
70 the `unix' subdirectory, run `./configure' and then `make'. Or you
71 can do the same in the top-level directory (we provide a little
72 wrapper that invokes configure one level down), which is more like
73 a normal Unix source archive but doesn't do so well at keeping the
74 per-platform stuff in each platform's subdirectory; it's up to you.
76 - unix/Makefile.gtk and unix/Makefile.ux are for non-autoconfigured
77 builds. These makefiles expect you to change into the `unix'
78 subdirectory, then run `make -f Makefile.gtk' or `make -f
79 Makefile.ux' respectively. Makefile.gtk builds all the programs but
80 relies on Gtk, whereas Makefile.ux builds only the command-line
81 utilities and has no Gtk dependence.
83 - For the graphical utilities, any of Gtk+-1.2, Gtk+-2.0, and Gtk+-3.0
84 should be supported. If you have more than one installed, you can
85 manually specify which one you want by giving the option
86 '--with-gtk=N' to the configure script where N is 1, 2, or 3.
87 (The default is the newest available, of course.) In the absence
88 of any Gtk version, the configure script will automatically
89 construct a Makefile which builds only the command-line utilities;
90 you can manually create this condition by giving configure the
91 option '--without-gtk'.
93 - pterm would like to be setuid or setgid, as appropriate, to permit
94 it to write records of user logins to /var/run/utmp and
95 /var/log/wtmp. (Of course it will not use this privilege for
96 anything else, and in particular it will drop all privileges before
97 starting up complex subsystems like GTK.) By default the makefile
98 will not attempt to add privileges to the pterm executable at 'make
99 install' time, but you can ask it to do so by running configure
100 with the option '--enable-setuid=USER' or '--enable-setgid=GROUP'.
102 - The Unix Makefiles have an `install' target. Note that by default
103 it tries to install `man' pages; if you have fetched the source via
104 Git then you will need to have built these using Halibut
107 - It's also possible to build the Windows version of PuTTY to run
108 on Unix by using Winelib. To do this, change to the `windows'
109 directory and run `make -f Makefile.mgw CC=winegcc RC=wrc'.
111 All of the Makefiles are generated automatically from the file
112 `Recipe' by the Perl script `mkfiles.pl' (except for the Unix one,
113 which is generated by the `configure' script; mkfiles.pl only
114 generates the input to automake). Additions and corrections to Recipe,
115 mkfiles.pl and/or configure.ac are much more useful than additions and
116 corrections to the actual Makefiles, Makefile.am or Makefile.in.
118 The Unix `configure' script and its various requirements are generated
119 by the shell script `mkauto.sh', which requires GNU Autoconf, GNU
120 Automake, and Gtk; if you've got the source from Git rather
121 than using one of our source snapshots, you'll need to run this
122 yourself. The input file to Automake is generated by mkfiles.pl along
123 with all the rest of the makefiles, so you will need to run mkfiles.pl
126 Documentation (in various formats including Windows Help and Unix
127 `man' pages) is built from the Halibut (`.but') files in the `doc'
128 subdirectory using `doc/Makefile'. If you aren't using one of our
129 source snapshots, you'll need to do this yourself. Halibut can be
130 found at <http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/halibut/>.
132 The PuTTY home web site is
134 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
136 If you want to send bug reports or feature requests, please read the
137 Feedback section of the web site before doing so. Sending one-line
138 reports saying `it doesn't work' will waste your time as much as
141 See the file LICENCE for the licence conditions.