All you need to know when hacking (modifying) GNU libiconv or when building it off the CVS. Requirements ============ You will need reasonably recent versions of the build tools: * A C compiler. Such as GNU GCC. + Homepage: http://gcc.gnu.org/ * GNU automake + Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/ * GNU autoconf + Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/ * GNU m4 + Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/ * GNU gperf + Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/gperf/ * GNU groff 1.17 or newer + Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/groff/ * Perl + Homepage: http://www.perl.org/ * Either an internet connection or a recent copy of GNU gnulib. + Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnulib/ And, of course, the packages listed in the DEPENDENCIES file. Building off the CVS ==================== Access to the CVS is described at http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=51585 . After fetching the sources from the CVS, peek at the comments in autogen.sh, then run "./autogen.sh"; then you can proceed with "./configure" as usual. Adding new encodings ==================== For an indication which encodings are acceptable in the official version of GNU libiconv, take a look at NOTES. For an indication which files need to be modified when adding a new encoding, look for example at the 2007-05-25 ChangeLog entry for RK1048. The lib/*.h file for an encoding is usually generated by one of the tools in the tools/ directory. All you need to provide is the conversion table in the format of the many *.TXT files.