Installation Guide

C-Menu INSTALLATION

The instructions below will guide you through the process of installing C-Menu on your Linux system.

Environment Configuration

Configure your environment to use the C-Menu binaries and libraries:

Prepend the C-Menu bin directory to your PATH environment variable by adding the following line to your shell profile (e.g., ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc). Assuming you extracted the menuapp directory to your home directory, the line would look like this:

export PATH="$HOME"/menuapp/bin:"$PATH"

Download and Install C-Menu Source

Currently, building from source is the recommended way to install C-Menu, as it ensures that you have the latest features and bug fixes.

gh repo clone BillWaller/C-Menu

Copy the menuapp directory to your desired location:

cp -r C-Menu/src/menuapp /home/yourusername/

Prerequisites

One of:
- CMake 3.20 or higher, or
- GNU Make 4.3 or higher
A C compiler that supports C23 or later (e.g., GCC 13 or later, Clang 15 or later)
GNU GLIBC development files
GNU Math Library (libm) development files

One or both:

NCursesw development libraries 6.5 or later
Notcurses development libraries v3.0.17 or later

To Build the C-Menu Binaries and Libraries

Change to the source directory, C-Menu/src, and type:

./chkui

The script should respond with a message similar to the following:

menu linked with ncurses
CMake - NCURSES
Makefile - NCURSES

If these are the options you want, proceed with the build: To switch from NCURSES to NOTCURSES or vice versa, run the chkui script again with the "-s" option.

./chkui -s

The script should respond with a message similar to the following:

menu linked with ncurses
CMake - NCURSES
Makefile - NCURSES
CMake switching to NOTCURSES
Makefile switching to NOTCURSES

To build with CMake, remain in the source directory, C-Menu/src, and type:

./cmake.sh

This will create a build directory if it doesn't already exist. After the cmake.sh script finishes, change to the build directory and type:

make

make install

To build with GNU Makefile, remain in the source directory, C-Menu/src, and type:

make

make install

Finish the installation

Vrify that the C-Menu libraries and binaries have been installed to the correct directories (e.g., /home/yourusername/menuapp/lib64 and /home/yourusername/menuapp/bin) and that the permissions are set correctly.

ls -l "$HOME"/menuapp/lib64 "$HOME"/menuapp/bin

Directory Listing

Register the C-Menu libraries with the dynamic linker by running the following command:

sudo ldconfig -v "$HOME"/menuapp/lib64

Add the C-Menu bin directory to your PATH environment variable by adding the following line to your shell profile (e.g., ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc):

export PATH="/home/yourusername/menuapp/bin:"$PATH"

(replace /home/yourusername with the actual path to your menuapp directory) and save the file. 😆

Copy the sample minitrc from the C-Menu/menuapp directory to your home directory:

cp "$HOME"/menuapp/minitrc "$HOME"/.minitrc

Edit the ~/.minitrc file to customize your C-Menu configuration as needed.

vi ~/.minitrc

Source your shell profile to apply the changes to your PATH:

source ~/.bashrc

Start C-Menu by running the following command in your terminal:

menu

C-Menu Running