# Chapter 1 - Building, Installing, and Packaging Mini-XML

This chapter describes how to build, install, and package Mini-XML on your system from the source archive. You will need an ANSI/ISO-C compatible compiler to build Mini-XML - GCC works, as do most vendors' C compilers. If you are building Mini-XML on Windows, we recommend using the Visual C++ environment with the supplied solution file. For other operating systems, you'll need a POSIX-compatible shell and `make` program in addition to the C compiler.

## Compiling Mini-XML

Mini-XML comes with both an autoconf-based configure script and a Visual C++ solution that can be used to compile the library and associated tools.

### Compiling with Visual C++

Open the mxml.sln solution in the vcnet folder. Choose the desired build configuration, "Debug" (the default) or "Release", and then choose Build Solution from the Build menu.

### Compiling with Command-Line Tools

Type the following command to configure the Mini-XML source code for your system:

        ./configure ENTER

The default install prefix is /usr/local, which can be overridden using the `--prefix` option:

        ./configure --prefix=/foo ENTER

Other configure options can be found using the `--help` option:

        ./configure --help ENTER

Once you have configured the software, use the `make(1)` program to do the build and run the test program to verify that things are working, as follows:

        make ENTER

## Installing Mini-XML

If you are using Visual C++, copy the mxml.lib and and mxml.h files to the Visual C++ lib and include directories, respectively.

Otherwise, use the `make` command with the `install` target to install Mini-XML in the configured directories:

        make install ENTER