8 Building and Configure Options

Building nano from source is fairly straightforward if you are familiar with compiling programs with autoconf support:

• tar xvfz nano-x.y.z.tar.gz (where x.y.z is the version of nano)
• cd nano-x.y.z/
• ./configure
• make
• make install

The possible options to ./configure are:

--disable-browser

Disable the mini file browser when reading or writing files.

--disable-help

Disable the help function. Doing this makes the binary much smaller, but makes it difficult for new users to learn more than very basic things about using the editor.

--disable-justify

Disable the justify and unjustify functions.

--disable-mouse

Disable all mouse functionality. This also disables the -m command line option, which enables the mouse functionality.

--disable-operatingdir

Disable setting the operating directory. This also disables the -o command line option, which sets the operating directory.

--disable-speller

Disable use of the spell checker. This also disables the -s command line option, which allows specifying an alternate spell checker.

--disable-tabcomp

Disable the tab completion code when reading or writing files.

--disable-wrapping

Disable all long line wrapping. This also eliminates the -w command line option, which enables long line wrapping.

--enable-tiny

This option disables all the above. It also disables some of the larger internals of the editor, like the marking code and the cut to end of line code. It also disables the function toggles.

--enable-debug

Enable support for runtime debug output. This can get pretty messy, so chances are you only want this feature to work on the nano source.

--enable-extra

Enable extra features. At the moment, this is just easter egg-type stuff.

--enable-color

Enable support for syntax coloring of files using the nanorc file. This enables nanorc support as well.

--enable-multibuffer

Enable support for opening multiple files at a time and switching between them on the fly.

--enable-nanorc

Enable support for reading the nanorc file at startup. You can store custom settings in the nanorc file rather than having to pass command line options to get desired behavior. See See Nanorc Files, for more info.

--enable-all

Shortcut for enabling the above four features (extra, color, multibuffer, and nanorc).

--disable-nls

Disables Native Language support. This will disable use of the available GNU nano translations.

--disable-wrapping-as-root

Disable long line wrapping by default when nano is run as root.

--enable-utf8

Enable support for reading and writing Unicode files. This will require either a wide version of curses, or a UTF-8-enabled version of Slang.

--disable-utf8

Disable support for reading and writing Unicode files.

--with-slang

Compiling nano with Slang is supported, and will make the binary notably smaller than if compiled with ncurses or other curses libraries.

Table of Contents

• 1 Introduction
  • 1.1 Overview
  • 1.2 Command Line Options
• 2 Editor Basics
  • 2.1 Entering Text
  • 2.2 Special Functions
  • 2.3 The Titlebar
  • 2.4 The Statusbar
  • 2.5 Shortcut Lists
  • 2.6 Using the Mouse
• 3 Online Help
• 4 Feature Toggles
• 5 Nanorc Files
• 6 The File Browser
• 7 Pico Compatibility
• 8 Building and Configure Options