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https://github.com/xmltv/xmltv

Utilities to obtain, generate, and post-process TV listings data in XMLTV format
https://github.com/xmltv/xmltv

listings perl radio tv

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Utilities to obtain, generate, and post-process TV listings data in XMLTV format

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README 

        

HOWTO: install XMLTV under Cygwin on Windows

-------------------------------------------



Introduction

------------



XMLTV works mostly fine under the Cygwin unix environment for Windows...



This allows you to use the normal Perl Source code XMLTV installation

without the need for the Windows executable version, giving the

following advantages:

    * faster download of new XMLTV versions (source dist is 1/10th the

      size of the Win32 version)

    * ability to develop, debug and test new grabbers

    * ability to quickly patch bugs in grabbers without waiting for

      the new Win32 EXE version..

    * ability to use grabbers that are not yet part of the Win32 EXE



The disadvantages are:



    - Cygwin gives a unix command line environment that is alien to

      most windows users,

    - the initial download is very large -- Cygwin itself with the

      required packages is about 40Mb and the XMLTV prereq file is

      another 4Mb.

    - Cygwin uses a large amount of disk space.



Also cygwin itself has a few odd features that can cause some issues

with XMLTV, and TK based XMLTV GUI apps do not work in cygwin (tv_check)



WARNING: I have not tested every XMLTV app and grabber under Cygwin...



WARNING: Unix command lines can be very powerful and provide very

little hand-holding (such as 'Are you sure' messages when you want to

delete things). For this reason it is relatively easy to delete files

unintentionally and to render your system non-operational..

Take care with command lines and make regular backups!



Scope

-----



This HOWTO only deals with how to get XMLTV running on Cygwin. It does

not deal in any way with how to use Cygwin itself other than

installing the required packages fro XMLTV, so knowledge of how to

work using the unix-style command line shell will be required.



Advanced usage, such as applying patch files and working with CVS

checkouts is not covered by this HOWTO.



Instructions

------------



1) Install Cygwin:

------------------



Download and run Cygwin's installer.

    http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe



In the installer, select:

    Install from Internet

    -> Next

    Select a suitable installation directory, All Users, Unix file type

    -> Next

    Select Local Package directory = some temporary folder...

        there will be a folder created - named after the download server -

        which you can delete after installation.

    -> Next

    Select the correct HTTP/FTP proxy settings

    -> Next

    Select a nearby mirror server

    -> Next



The package list will now be downloaded and shown in a categorised

tree view.

-- Click on the (+) text button to expand / contract a branch

-- Click on the '() Skip' text-button on a package line to select a

   version to download. It will change from 'Skip' to the version

   number. If the package is already installed, the additional options

   'Keep', 'Reinstall', 'Uninstall' will also be shown



Apart from the default packages that are pre-selected by the

installer, you need to ensure that the following packages are selected

    Base/

        diffutils

	tar

    Devel/

	expat

	gcc

	make

    Interpreters/

	perl

    Libs/

	libiconv

	libiconv2

	libxml2  ** select version 2.5.11 or 2.6.7 or later ** see below

    Utils/

	bzip2

	patch

	patchutils

	rebase

    Web/

	wget



Other useful packages to install are editors:

    Editor/

	vim (vi clone)

	nano (pico clone)



If you want to have access to the pre-release, under-development

versions of XMLTV then the CVS package is also useful

    Devel/

	cvs



** Note Re libxml2:

The Perl XML::LibXML package is known not to work with certain versions

of libxml2.  This package is required for some of the grabbers (tv_grab_se)

At time of writing, libxml2 version 2.5.11 is known to be OK, as is 2.6.7.

At time of writing, Cygwin's default version is 2.6.4, which is known

not to work For more information on working versions see README.md in

xml_prereq_x/XML-LibXML-xxx.  For this reason you must make sure that

the correct version is selected here by clicking several times on the

() 'Skip'/'Version' button...



After a lot of downloading, (about 40Mb) and some installing you

should now have cygwin in your start menu... Running it gives you a

command window with a unix-style prompt:



username@hostname WorkingDir

$



Tips:

    The Tab key will complete the remains of a filename/directory

    name if unique. If not unique, it will complete as much as

    possible, and a second Tab will indicate the possible matches.



    ~/ is shorthand for your home directory. You can always go to

    this directory with cd ~/



    Your PC's drives now appear with unix paths as:

	 /cygdrive/c/

    but the cd command accepts

	cd c:

    as a shortcut.



    The cygwin installation directory: (c:/cygwin by default) is mapped

    to the cygwin 'root' directory: '/'



Note: If your PC does not have access to a broadband internet

connection, and you don't want to spend several hours downloading 40Mb

of Cygwin, but you have access to another PC that does have broadband,

the cygwin installer has the option 'Download from Internet' to just

download the required packages into the 'Local Package Directory'.

You then write the contents of the directory to CD or a Flash disk,

then use the 'Install from Local Directory' option on your target PC.



2) Download and unpack XMLTV source

-----------------------------------



Now download the XMLTV source distribution, and the _prereq files from

sourceforge

    http://files.xmltv.org

Save them in your Cygwin Home directory: c:/cygwin/home/username



At the Cygwin command prompt, Unpack the 2 tar.bz2 files using the

command lines:

   bunzip2 -c xmltv-x.x.x.tar.bz2 |  tar -xvf -

   bunzip2 -c xmltv_prereq-x.tar.bz2 |  tar -xvf -



Where x is replaced by the version numbers of the files you downloaded



3) Install the XMLTV prereq packages:

-------------------------------------



Change directory to the prereq directory created by unpacking the

tar.bz2 file and list the packages therein.

    cd xmltv_prereq-x

    ls



For more info check the README.md:

    less README.md



Note that the packages with TK cannot be installed in the current

version of Cygwin, as PERL/TK is not yet part of Cygwin... This is not

important, and only means that the XMLTV tv_check command cannot be

installed



The packages need to be installed in alphanumeric order -- ie all

packages with 00 first, then 01 then A-Z then a-z

So, For each directory starting with 00 (apart from 00_tk*) do:

    cd directory

    perl Makefile.PL; make test install

    cd ..

Do the same for each directory starting with 01, then for each of the

remaining directories (apart from those with Tk*)...



Note: Some of the prerequisite modules (such as PerlIO-gzip, and

libwww-perl) might fail some of its tests and will not install with the

above command. These will need to be installed by running

    make install

in the package directory. I have not found the failed tests to cause a

problem yet.



Note: When installing XML-LibXML I got an error:

    C:\cygwin\bin\perl.exe: *** unable to remap C:\cygwin\bin\cygiconv-2.dll

    to same address as parent...

If this is the case, close all other Cygwin windows and run the command:

    rebaseall -v

then try again.



Note: When installing HTML-Parser, answer No to the question:

    Do you want decoding on unicode entities? [no] no

I have had problems with decoded Unicode characters in Perl/Cygwin.



Note: When installing libwww-perl, answer NO to the questions:

    Do you want to install the GET alias? [y] n

    Do you want to install the HEAD alias? [y] n

    Do you want to install the POST alias? [y] n

this is because installing these aliases failed on my system!



Note: you will not be able to install Text-Kakasi (required for Japan

grabber) without downloading, building and installing the Kakasi

library. See README in the xmltv_prereq directory for more details. If

you don't need this, just skip the package.



cd back to your home directory when complete

    cd ~/



4) Configure TimeZone

---------------------



XMLTV (actually the PERL Date::Manip module) needs the TZ variable set

correctly for the time and date handling for summer and winter time to

work. Date::Manip has internal knowledge of some time zone values.



If the TZ variable is not set, some XMLTV grabbers and the tv_split

command will not work.



Cygwin has its own idea of the time zone (from windows), and

overriding the time zone with TZ can show confusing output from some

Cygwin commands that display the time and date...



eg: No TZ set, my time zone in windows is CET == GMT+1, the current

local time is 11:15)

    $ date

    Tue Mar  9 11:15:06 RST 2004

Setting TZ to CET

    $ export TZ=CET

    $ date

    Tue Mar  9 10:15:25 GMT 2004

as you can see setting a TZ variable makes Cygwin report all times as GMT...



NOTE Setting TZ does not change the date of the system, merely the

*display* of the dates...



To avoid this confusion, it is best only to set the TZ variable when

you are running the XMLTV tools.



To set your time zone, run.

    export TZ=EST

or whatever your time zone is...

This will set the time zone for all future commands run in this Cygwin

window. If you use another window, you will need to rerun this

command...



To see the list of the time zones understood by Date::Manip:

    http://search.cpan.org/~sbeck/DateManip-5.42a/Manip.pod#TIMEZONES

or if a newer version has been released, go to

    http://search.cpan.org/~sbeck

    click on Date::Manip

    Click on Date::Manip in the Modules list to see the docs

    Click on TIMEZONES to see the TZ list



To check that this TZ works with Date::Manip, run the command:

    $ perl -e 'use Date::Manip; print Date_TimeZone;'



If all is OK, and Date::Manip recognised your TZ, this should print

out the time zone. If not you will get some

errors such as "ERROR: Date::Manip unable to determine TimeZone."



The actual value of the time zone should not affect the results of most

of the XMLTV commands, grabbers and tools *EXCEPT*  for tv_grab_na --

which requires the time zone to be correctly set.



5) Install XMLTV

----------------

cd to the unpacked xmltv-x.x.x directory and run



    perl Makefile.PL



The defaults will list all the grabbers that you can install and that

are compatible with the Perl modules on your system. Either accept the

defaults, or customise the grabbers/tools that you want to install..



Note tv_check will not work due to TK not being available.



Build and test:

    make test

Normally, all tests should pass successfully.



Install:

    make install



That?s it. You can now delete the downloaded xmltv files and unpacked

directories if you want to.



You now can use XMLTV like you would normally on unix:



eg

    tv_grab_uk_rt --configure

    tv_grab_uk_rt --days 1 > uk_today.xml



6) Automation of grabbing (optional)

------------------------------------



If you need to automate the grabbing, you can use a Windows scheduled

task to run a Bash shell script as follows:



Create a file in your Cygwin home directory called

xmltv_scheduled_grab.sh containing:



-- START OF FILE -- CUT-HERE --

#!/usr/bin/bash

# IMPORTANT! previous line must be first line of file!

#

# Set up environment

. /etc/profile

. ~/.bash_profile



# cd to home directory

cd



# Set up TZ variable

# CHANGE THIS TO MATCH YOUR TIME ZONE

#

export TZ=CET



# Run grabber get 5 days listings, sending log messages to a logfile

# CHANGE THE GRABBER COMMAND LINE TO WHAT YOU REQUIRE

#

tv_grab_uk_rt --days 5 --output uk_rt_xmltv.xml | tee grab_uk_rt_xmltv.log 2>&1



-- END OF FILE -- CUT-HERE --



(Obviously, as indicated, you need to change the grabber command line

and the setting of TZ to what you require...)



Make this command  executable:

    chmod +x xmltv_scheduled_grab.sh



Test this command at the cygwin command line

    xmltv_scheduled_grab.sh



If it is OK, you should get 2 files in your cygwin home

    uk_rt_xmltv.xml containing the XMLTV output

    grab_uk_rt_xmltv.log containing the log messages from the grabber



You now need to create a Windows scheduled task to run this script

    (Win XP: Start

	  -> Control Panel

	  -> Performance and Maintenance

	  -> Scheduled tasks

	  -> Add Scheduled task

     Win 2000: Start

	  -> Control Panel

	  -> Scheduled tasks

	  -> Add Scheduled task)



Select ANY program from the list (you will change the actual command

line later).

Select a schedule (you can also change this later)

Ignore the username/password screen for the moment.

Select 'Open advanced properties for this task' before clicking OK to

allow you set the real command line in the Task Properties window...



The problem with this command is that it will want to create a console

window that will pop up on top of everything else when it runs...



You can either create this window minimised (via a transient window

that will pop up and disappear -- also annoying, but less so) using the scheduled

command:

    cmd /c start /min c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe ~/xmltv_scheduled_grab.sh



or if you download and install the program runhide from:

   http://www.extendingflash.com/utilities/runhide.html

and then use the scheduled command line

    runhide.exe c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe ~/xmltv_scheduled_grab.sh

then the window will never appear...



You can test these command lines by pasting them into the start->Run box.



Enter the required command line in the Scheduled Task Properties window.

Click the 'Set password' button, and enter your password (if you have one).

Check the Schedule and Settings tabs.

Finally click OK.



You can test the scheduled task by right-clicking it and selecting Run.



======================================================================



HISTORY

-------



09/03/2004 Niel Markwick

	   initial version

11/03/2004 Niel Markwick

	   added more information on Time Zones, corrected typo's