
     ##################################################################
     #                                                                #
     #  FDNPKG - a network-enabled package manager for FreeDOS        #
     #  Copyright (C) 2012-2016 Mateusz Viste. All rights reserved.   #
     #                                                                #
     #                 http://fdnpkg.sourceforge.net                  #
     #                                                                #
     ##################################################################



*** What is FDNPKG ***

FDNPKG is an online update tool for FreeDOS. FDNPKG is released under the GNU
GPL license. It allows to install/remove software on a FreeDOS installation
using remote or local repositories. Remote (online) repositories can be either
http or gopher URLs. FDNPKG is written by Mateusz Viste, for the FreeDOS (tm)
Project, altough it can be used on other DOS systems as well. FDNPKG comes
with a lightweight tool called FDINST that is suitable for old, pre-386
systems with low amounts of memory. FDINST doesn't provide network support.
FDNPKG stands for "FreeDOS Network Package manager".


*** Configuration ***

The FDNPKG configuration file is a text file that contains various directives,
like repositories declarations, cache time, etc. I won't describe the
configuration file here, because it's pretty well commented itself. FDNPKG
looks for its configuration file into %DOSDIR%\BIN\FDNPKG.CFG by default, but
you can make FDNPKG use a configuration file at any other location, by setting
the FDNPKG.CFG environnement variable.
Example:
  SET FDNPKG.CFG=C:\MYDIR\FDNPKG.CFG


*** Requirements ***

To use FDNPKG, your system will need to fullfill following conditions:
  - 80386 class CPU
  - 3 MiB of free RAM or DPMI swap space (24 MiB if you wish to install
    LZMA-compressed packages)
  - at least as much free disk space in your %TEMP% directory as the size of
    the biggest package you wish to be able to install,
 and, if you'd like to use online repositories:
  - a loaded packet driver
  - a working WatTCP environnement (that is, a proper wattcp.cfg file)


*** Usage ***

Syntax: FDNPKG action [parameters]

Where action is one of the following:
 search [string]   - Search net repositories for package containing 'string'
 vsearch [string]  - Same as 'search', but prints also source repositories
 install pkg       - Install the package 'pkg' (or local zip file)
 install-nosrc pkg - Install the package 'pkg' (or local zip file) w/o sources
 install-wsrc pkg  - Install the package 'pkg' (or local zip file) with sources
 remove pkgname    - Remove the package 'pkgname'
 listlocal [str]   - List all local (installed) packages containing 'str'
 listfiles pkg     - List files owned by the package 'pkg'
 checkupdates      - check for available updates of packages and display them
 update [pkg]      - update 'pkg' to last version (or all packages if no arg)
 dumpcfg           - print out the configuration loaded from the cfg file
 license           - print out the license of this program


*** Some details about what a "package" is ***

FDNPKG is handling FreeDOS packages. A "package" is an archive containing
software in its binary and/or source code form. FreeDOS packages are in fact
standard ZIP files that contain a predefined directory tree (eg. BIN/,
SOURCE/, DOC/...). FDNPKG performs a set of tests on the package before trying
to install it, and refuses to install packages that seem to be invalid.
The ZIP format is a container that allows for multiple compression algorithms
to be used. FDNPKG supports these: stored files (no compression), deflate and
lzma.


*** Bulding from source ***

If you wish to build FDNPKG from sources, you will have to use the DJGPP
compiler (v2.05 or newer), along with the 'make' tool and the Watt32
library. The whole building procedure is automatized via a makefile file,
therefore building it requires only to type 'make', and then the required
magic should happen. You will need, however, to make sure that the Watt32
static library file is available in 'watt32/bin/libwatt.a', and that all
Watt32 header files are in the 'watt32/inc/' directory.


*** License ***

This program 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 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.

This program 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
this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
