Preliminaries
-------------

In order to build Platypus on Unix you'll need the following tools:

1.	GNU g++ version 3.1 or higher

Windows may either use MINGW (http://www.mingw.org/) or, preferably,
Microsoft's Visual Studio.


Architectural constraints
-------------------------

Because of the multi-threaded code used Platypus currently only
supports the following platforms and operating systems:


        | stand-alone | fork       | constraits
-----------------------------------------------------------	
Windows	| st/mt       | no support | x86 arch only
-----------------------------------------------------------
Linux   | st/mt       | st/mt      | x86-32 and x86-64 only
-----------------------------------------------------------
Solaris | st/mt       | st/mt      | (experimental) x86-32 and SPARC


Building Platypus on Unix
-------------------------

Basically it's 

$ ./configure
$ make 
$ make install

The configure script takes several options. See the generic INSTALL file for details.

	
Building Platypus on Windows
----------------------------

If you have Microsoft's Visual Studio you
can simply use the supplied solution file to build Platypus. With MINGW the
Unix instructions apply.


Documentation & Usage
---------------------

For some examples on how to run Platypus please visit 
http://www.cs.uni-potsdam.de/platypus/?page=usage

The usually up-to-date list of all the options Platypus understands
along with some explanation what each option does can be found at
http://www.cs.uni-potsdam.de/platypus/?page=options