--          This file is part of SmallEiffel The GNU Eiffel Compiler.
--          Copyright (C) 1994-98 LORIA - UHP - CRIN - INRIA - FRANCE
--            Dominique COLNET and Suzanne COLLIN - colnet@loria.fr 
--                       http://SmallEiffel.loria.fr
-- SmallEiffel is  free  software;  you can  redistribute it and/or modify it 
-- under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
-- Software  Foundation;  either  version  2, or (at your option)  any  later 
-- version. SmallEiffel is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,but
-- WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
-- or  FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.   See the GNU General Public License 
-- for  more  details.  You  should  have  received a copy of the GNU General 
-- Public  License  along  with  SmallEiffel;  see the file COPYING.  If not,
-- write to the  Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330,
-- Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
--
1 - What is SmallEiffel ? -
SmallEiffel is an Eiffel compiler for the Eiffel language.
SmallEiffel is the GNU Eiffel  Compiler.
SmallEiffel is free software distributed under the terms of the 
GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software 
Foundation.
You can download the latest official version of SmallEiffel at:

   http://SmallEiffel.loria.fr

For more information about commercial applications written in
SmallEiffel, please read the file SmallEiffelFAQ included in
the distribution.

2 - Brief Description of SmallEiffel -

It is intended to be a complete, though small and very fast, 
free Eiffel compiler. It is available for a very wide range 
of platforms: GNU/Linux, GNU/Hurd, FreeBSD, BSD/OS, NetBSD, OpenBSD,
HP-UX, IRIX, XENIX, Solaris, DOS, OS2, WINDOWS NT/95/2000, Macintosh, 
NeXT, Amiga, BeOS, QNX, VMS, etc. Actually, SmallEiffel should run on 
any platform for which an ANSI C compiler exists.

The current distribution includes an Eiffel to C compiler, an Eiffel 
to Java bytecode compiler, a documentation tool, a
pretty printer and various other tools. 

SmallEiffel is the result of a research project of the LORIA, a join
computer science research center in Nancy, France.
It has been developed by Dominique Colnet, of the ECOO team. 

This project began in 1994, and since the very first public release 
in September 1995, SmallEiffel has been used worldwide by increasingly 
numerous individuals and Universities. 

3 - Installation

Command install is the installation program for SmallEiffel The GNU
Eiffel Compiler. This command (class install.e) is entirely written 
in Eiffel and is the recommanded one to install SmallEiffel The GNU
Eiffel Compiler. 

The install.e source code as well as the generated C code install.c 
are in the SmallEiffel directory. 

If you are under some UNIX (including GNU/Linux) system and if you want
to use the gcc compiler like we do, simply type make in the SmallEiffel
directory. The Makefile which is in the SmallEiffel directory C-compile 
and launch automatically the install command. Furthermore, if you want 
to select manually the C compiler to be used, you should consider to 
type "make interactive" (this will add the -interactive flag of the 
install command). 

If you are using a Windows system, a precompiled install.exe is 
available too in the SmallEiffel directory, you just have to run it. 

On other systems, the very first step for installation is to C compile 
the install.c file in order to run it.

4 - Contents of the SmallEiffel directory -

4.1 - directory man: miscellaneous help files. 
4.2 - directory bin: the place where executable files will be
      put by the installation process.
4.3 - directory lib_show: demonstration and examples in Eiffel.
4.4 - directory lib_std: standard Eiffel library (string.e, 
      integer.e, general.e, array.e, ...).
4.5 - directory lib_number: arbitrary precision NUMBER library.
4.6 - directory lib_rand: random number generators library.
4.7 - directory lib_se: source code of SmallEiffel (commands
      'compile', 'compile_to_c', 'pretty', 'short', 
      'compile_to_jvm', 'print_jvm_class', ...).
4.8 - directory bin_c: generated C code of compile_to_c (to be able
      to bootstrap the compiler during installation).
4.9 - directory misc: miscellaneous files.
4.10 - directory contrib : Useful software not written by 
      the SmallEiffel team.

5 - Bug Reports -
Thank in advance for bug reports. Don't forget to have a look
first in the misc/NOT_YET_IMPLEMENTED.txt file.
Please, try to isolate the bug as much as possible.
The best is to be able to create a single file, as small a
possible (which includes the bug).
Please report the bug in our mailing list. See:

http://SmallEiffel.loria.fr

D.Colnet - colnet@loria.fr
