B.3.1.1 Installing a Prepared Distribution for PC Systems

If you have received a binary distribution prepared by the MS-DOS maintainers, then gawk and the necessary support files appear under the ‘gnu’ directory, with executables in ‘gnu/bin’, libraries in ‘gnu/lib/awk’, and manual pages under ‘gnu/man’. This is designed for easy installation to a ‘/gnu’ directory on your drive—however, the files can be installed anywhere provided AWKPATH is set properly. Regardless of the installation directory, the first line of ‘igawk.cmd’ and ‘igawk.bat’ (in ‘gnu/bin’) may need to be edited.

The binary distribution contains a separate file describing the contents. In particular, it may include more than one version of the gawk executable.

OS/2 (32 bit, EMX) binary distributions are prepared for the ‘/usr’ directory of your preferred drive. Set UNIXROOT to your installation drive (e.g., ‘e:’) if you want to install gawk onto another drive than the hardcoded default ‘c:’. Executables appear in ‘/usr/bin’, libraries under ‘/usr/share/awk’, manual pages under ‘/usr/man’, Texinfo documentation under ‘/usr/info’, and NLS files under ‘/usr/share/locale’. Note that the files can be installed anywhere provided AWKPATH is set properly.

If you already have a file ‘/usr/info/dir’ from another package do not overwrite it! Instead enter the following commands at your prompt (replace ‘x:’ by your installation drive):

install-info --info-dir=x:/usr/info x:/usr/info/gawk.info
install-info --info-dir=x:/usr/info x:/usr/info/gawkinet.info

The binary distribution may contain a separate file containing additional or more detailed installation instructions.