-This is the README for PuTTY, a free Win32 Telnet and SSH client.
+This is the README for the source archive of PuTTY, a free Win32
+and Unix Telnet and SSH client.
-The provided Makefile is for MS Visual C++ systems. Type `nmake' to
-build both putty.exe (the main program) and pscp.exe (an SCP
-client).
+If you want to rebuild PuTTY from source, we provide a variety of
+Makefiles and equivalents. (If you have fetched the source from
+Git, you'll have to generate the Makefiles yourself -- see
+below.)
-Setting up a project file in the Visual C++ IDE sometimes fails to
-work. In particular, Visual Studio 6 falls over on the odd macro
-usage in ssh.c. This is a bug in Visual Studio, since the VC++6
-command line compiler works fine. If in doubt, just use `nmake'.
+There are various compile-time directives that you can use to
+disable or modify certain features; it may be necessary to do this
+in some environments. They are documented in `Recipe', and in
+comments in many of the generated Makefiles.
+
+For building on Windows:
+
+ - windows/Makefile.vc is for command-line builds on MS Visual C++
+ systems. Change into the `windows' subdirectory and type `nmake
+ -f Makefile.vc' to build all the PuTTY binaries.
+
+ As of 2017, we successfully compile PuTTY with both Visual Studio
+ 7 (2003) and Visual Studio 14 (2015), so our guess is that it will
+ probably build with versions in between those as well.
+
+ - Inside the windows/MSVC subdirectory are MS Visual Studio project
+ files for doing GUI-based builds of the various PuTTY utilities.
+ These have been tested on Visual Studio 7 and 10.
+
+ You should be able to build each PuTTY utility by loading the
+ corresponding .dsp file in Visual Studio. For example,
+ MSVC/putty/putty.dsp builds PuTTY itself, MSVC/plink/plink.dsp
+ builds Plink, and so on.
+
+ - windows/Makefile.bor is for the Borland C compiler. Type `make -f
+ Makefile.bor' while in the `windows' subdirectory to build all
+ the PuTTY binaries.
+
+ - windows/Makefile.mgw is for MinGW / Cygwin installations. Type
+ `make -f Makefile.mgw' while in the `windows' subdirectory to
+ build all the PuTTY binaries.
+
+ MinGW and friends can lag behind other toolchains in their support
+ for the Windows API. Compile-time levers are provided to exclude
+ some features; the defaults are set appropriately for the
+ 'mingw-w64' cross-compiler provided with Ubuntu 14.04. If you are
+ using an older toolchain, you may need to exclude more features;
+ alternatively, you may find that upgrading to a recent version of
+ the 'w32api' package helps.
+
+ - windows/Makefile.lcc is for lcc-win32. Type `make -f
+ Makefile.lcc' while in the `windows' subdirectory. (You will
+ probably need to specify COMPAT=-DNO_MULTIMON.)
+
+ - Inside the windows/DEVCPP subdirectory are Dev-C++ project
+ files for doing GUI-based builds of the various PuTTY utilities.
+
+The PuTTY team actively use Makefile.vc (with VC7) and Makefile.mgw
+(with mingw32), so we'll probably notice problems with those
+toolchains fairly quickly. Please report any problems with the other
+toolchains mentioned above.
+
+For building on Unix:
+
+ - unix/configure is for Unix and GTK. If you don't have GTK, you
+ should still be able to build the command-line utilities (PSCP,
+ PSFTP, Plink, PuTTYgen) using this script. To use it, change into
+ the `unix' subdirectory, run `./configure' and then `make'. Or you
+ can do the same in the top-level directory (we provide a little
+ wrapper that invokes configure one level down), which is more like
+ a normal Unix source archive but doesn't do so well at keeping the
+ per-platform stuff in each platform's subdirectory; it's up to you.
+
+ - unix/Makefile.gtk and unix/Makefile.ux are for non-autoconfigured
+ builds. These makefiles expect you to change into the `unix'
+ subdirectory, then run `make -f Makefile.gtk' or `make -f
+ Makefile.ux' respectively. Makefile.gtk builds all the programs but
+ relies on Gtk, whereas Makefile.ux builds only the command-line
+ utilities and has no Gtk dependence.
+
+ - For the graphical utilities, any of Gtk+-1.2, Gtk+-2.0, and Gtk+-3.0
+ should be supported. If you have more than one installed, you can
+ manually specify which one you want by giving the option
+ '--with-gtk=N' to the configure script where N is 1, 2, or 3.
+ (The default is the newest available, of course.) In the absence
+ of any Gtk version, the configure script will automatically
+ construct a Makefile which builds only the command-line utilities;
+ you can manually create this condition by giving configure the
+ option '--without-gtk'.
+
+ - pterm would like to be setuid or setgid, as appropriate, to permit
+ it to write records of user logins to /var/run/utmp and
+ /var/log/wtmp. (Of course it will not use this privilege for
+ anything else, and in particular it will drop all privileges before
+ starting up complex subsystems like GTK.) By default the makefile
+ will not attempt to add privileges to the pterm executable at 'make
+ install' time, but you can ask it to do so by running configure
+ with the option '--enable-setuid=USER' or '--enable-setgid=GROUP'.
+
+ - The Unix Makefiles have an `install' target. Note that by default
+ it tries to install `man' pages; if you have fetched the source via
+ Git then you will need to have built these using Halibut
+ first - see below.
+
+ - It's also possible to build the Windows version of PuTTY to run
+ on Unix by using Winelib. To do this, change to the `windows'
+ directory and run `make -f Makefile.mgw CC=winegcc RC=wrc'.
+
+All of the Makefiles are generated automatically from the file
+`Recipe' by the Perl script `mkfiles.pl' (except for the Unix one,
+which is generated by the `configure' script; mkfiles.pl only
+generates the input to automake). Additions and corrections to Recipe,
+mkfiles.pl and/or configure.ac are much more useful than additions and
+corrections to the actual Makefiles, Makefile.am or Makefile.in.
+
+The Unix `configure' script and its various requirements are generated
+by the shell script `mkauto.sh', which requires GNU Autoconf, GNU
+Automake, and Gtk; if you've got the source from Git rather
+than using one of our source snapshots, you'll need to run this
+yourself. The input file to Automake is generated by mkfiles.pl along
+with all the rest of the makefiles, so you will need to run mkfiles.pl
+and then mkauto.sh.
+
+Documentation (in various formats including Windows Help and Unix
+`man' pages) is built from the Halibut (`.but') files in the `doc'
+subdirectory using `doc/Makefile'. If you aren't using one of our
+source snapshots, you'll need to do this yourself. Halibut can be
+found at <http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/halibut/>.
The PuTTY home web site is
- http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty.html
+ http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
-Bug reports and feature requests should be sent to
-<putty-bugs@lists.tartarus.org>. PLEASE read the section on the web
-site about how to report bugs effectively. Do NOT send one-line
-reports saying `it doesn't work'!
+If you want to send bug reports or feature requests, please read the
+Feedback section of the web site before doing so. Sending one-line
+reports saying `it doesn't work' will waste your time as much as
+ours.
See the file LICENCE for the licence conditions.