This document describes the general use of DSSS. == Building Software with DSSS == Most D software can be built with DSSS, but if it hasn't been set up for DSSS the process is more complicated. To make things simple, we assume that the software you're trying to compile has already been set up to use DSSS - if it has not, read README.software_engineers. Building software is quite easy. You simply have to extract the sources, and change your directory to that of the sources, then invoke DSSS: $ dsss build DSSS will then proceed to build the software. 'dsss build' has several options, but they're generally only useful for software distribution maintainers. You can attain more information on them with the command: $ dsss build --help You can build only a specified target by simply adding it to the command line: $ dsss build dzipper Of particular use is the option --doc, which generates .html documentation from DDoc comments of compiled libraries: $ dsss build --doc You can make DSSS remove all of the intermediate files it created, leaving only the fully-compiled binaries and libraries, with the command: $ dsss clean Finally, you can cause DSSS to remove /all/ compiled files, essentially leaving the source directory as it was before DSSS was used at all, with the command: $ dsss distclean If you'd like certain flags to be included whenever you call DSSS, you can add them to your DSSS RC file: ~/.dsssrc on POSIX, dsss.rc next to dsss.exe on Windows. == Installing Software with DSSS == Some software can be used directly after building, but most software, libraries in particular, expect to be installed somewhere. DSSS can install software to any directory you choose, but will default to its own directory. After building, to install software to the default directory (provided by DSSS), invoke DSSS with the command: $ dsss install If you'd like to install the software to some other directory, you can specify that directory with the "--prefix" option to DSSS, like so: $ dsss install --prefix= If you generated documentation at build time, and would like to install that documentation, use the --doc flag to `dsss install`: $ dsss install --doc You can also uninstall previously installed software. For example, to uninstall the hypothetical package "dhello": $ dsss uninstall dhello == Acquiring Software with DSSS == A very convenient feature of DSSS is its ability to install software from the Internet. To install the hypothetical package "dhello" from DSSS' Internet repository, use the command: $ dsss net install dhello Furthermore, DSSS can, from a source directory, install all of the dependencies of that source. This allows developers to not concern themselves with whether the dependencies for their software is installed, or where the sources come from. To install the dependencies for the software you're building, just invoke DSSS with the command: $ dsss net deps