TWiki System Requirements

Server and client requirements for TWiki 01-Feb-2003 (pending release)

Low client and server requirements are core features that keep TWiki widely deployable, particularly across a range of browser platforms and versions.

Server Requirements

TWiki is written in Perl 5, uses a number of shell commands, and requires RCS (Revision Control System), a GNU Free Software package. TWiki is developed in a basic Linux/Apache environment. It also works with Microsoft Windows, and should have no problem on any other platform that meets the requirements.

Required Server Environment
Resource	Unix	Windows*
Perl	5.005_03 or higher (5.6.1 recommended, 5.8.0 not recommended yet, see TWiki:Codev.UsingPerl58OnRedHat8)
Non-standard Perl modules	Net::SMTP (or sendmail)	Net::SMTP, MIME::Base64, Digest::SHA1
RCS	5.7 or higher (including GNU diff) Optional, but the all-Perl RCS replacement is not currently recommended for live sites - see TWiki:Codev.RcsLite.
GNU diff	GNU diff 2.7 or higher is required when not using the all-Perl RcsLite. Install on PATH if not included with RCS (check version with diff -v)
Other external programs	ls, fgrep, egrep
Cron/scheduler	cron	cron equivalents
Web server	Apache 1.3 is well supported; Apache 2.0 is not recommended yet (see TWiki:Support.FailedAuthenticationWithApache2OnWinNT). For other servers, CGI support, authentication, extended path required

* Current documentation mainly covers Linux and Apache installations. See WindowsInstallCookbook for a Windows installation guide. See TWiki:Codev.TWikiOn for help with installation on various platforms including Unix, MacOS X, Apache mod_perl, web hosts, etc.

Client Requirements

The TWiki standard installation has extremely low browser requirements:

• HTML 3.2 compliant
• generates XHTML 1.0 pages that are compatible with HTML 3.2
• minimal use of JavaScript in the user interface (degrades gracefully)
• no cookies
• no CSS

You can easily add functionality, by customizing TWikiTemplates, for one, while tailoring the browser requirements to your situation.

Known Issues

• The TWikiPlugins feature currently does not have compatibility guidelines for developers. Plugins can require just about anything - browser-specific functions, stylesheets (CSS), Java applets, cookies, specific Perl modules,... - check the individual Plugin specs.
  • Plugins included in the TWiki distribution do not add requirements.

-- MikeMannix - 12 Jan 2002