Before beginning the installation of the WFDB Software Package, obtain and install the libwww package from http://www.w3.org/Library/ or from http://www.physionet.org/physiotools/libwww/. This package is provided with most current versions of GNU/Linux. (If you have a program called libwww-config, then libwww is installed already.) You may omit this step if you do not wish to have NETFILES support.
Also download and install the XView software packages from http://www.physionet.org/physiotools/xview/ if you wish to use WAVE. Sources are available, as are binaries for several versions of GNU/Linux. If you are using SunOS or Solaris, XView binaries are available in the Open Look Software Development package and may be installed already. (If you have a program called textedit, then XView is installed already.) If you are able to use an existing set of binaries, these are recommended, since the sources may take a long time to compile. Be sure that the directory containing textedit, usually /usr/openwin/bin, is in your PATH. You may omit this step if you do not wish to use WAVE.
If you have downloaded the software from PhysioNet or another source, you will have a gzip-compressed tar archive. Unpack it using the commands:
gzip -d wfdb.tar.gz tar xfv wfdb.tar
(If you have GNU tar, as on GNU/Linux, you can combine these into a single command: tar xfvz wfdb.tar.gz.)
This will create a directory with a name of the form wfdb-m.n.r, where m.n.r is the version number of the included WFDB library (e.g., 10.3.0). Enter this directory.
You should now be ready to configure, compile, and install the software, using the commands:
./configure make install
The ./configure command asks where you wish to install the package. If you accept the default (/usr), you will need root permissions when runnning make install. If you choose another location, follow the instructions given by configure for setting your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables.
Depending on the speed of your system and of your C compiler, make will generally require between 1 and 10 minutes.
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PhysioNetUpdated 5 May 2004