TWiki System Requirements
Server and client requirements
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.
| Resource | Required Server Environment * |
| Perl | 5.005_03 or higher (5.8.4 or higher is recommended) |
| RCS | 5.7 or higher (including GNU diff) Optional, TWiki includes a pure perl implementation of RCS that can be used instead (though it's slower) |
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) Must be the version used by RCS, to avoid problems with binary attachments - RCS may have hard-coded path to diff |
| Other external programs | fgrep, egrep |
| Cron/scheduler | • Unix: cron • Windows: cron equivalents |
| Web server | Apache is well supported; for other servers, see the TWiki:Codev.CategoryCookbook lists |
Required CPAN Modules
The following Perl modules are used by TWiki:
| Module | Preferred version |
| Cwd | >=3.05 |
| File::Spec | >=3.05 |
| Data::Dumper | >=2.121 |
| File::Copy | >=2.06 |
| FileHandle | >=2.01 |
| CGI::Carp | >=1.26 |
| Time::Local | >=1.11 |
| IO::File | >=1.10 |
| File::Find | >=1.05 |
| Config | >=0 |
| Algorithm::Diff | |
| Error | |
| Text::Diff | |
Optional CPAN Modules
The following Perl modules may be used by TWiki:
| Module | Preferred version | Description |
| CGI::Cookie | >=1.24 | Used for session support |
| CGI::Session | >=3.95 | Used for session support |
| Digest::base | | |
| Digest::SHA1 | | |
| Jcode | | Used for I18N support with perl 5.6 |
| Locale::Maketext::Lexicon | >=0 | Used for I18N support |
| Net::SMTP | >=2.29 | Used for sending mail |
| Unicode::Map | | Used for I18N support with perl 5.6 |
| Unicode::Map8 | | Used for I18N support with perl 5.6 |
| Unicode::MapUTF8 | | Used for I18N support with perl 5.6 |
| Unicode::String | | Used for I18N support with perl 5.6 |
| URI | | Used for configure |
Most of them will probably already be available in your installation.
You can check if they are available from the command-line like this
perl -e 'use FileHandle; print $FileHandle::VERSION."\n"'
Client Requirements
The TWiki
standard installation has relatively low browser requirements:
- HTML 3.2 compliant
- Cookies, if persistent sessions are required
CSS and Javascript are used in most skins, though there is a low-fat skin (Classic skin) available that minimises these requirements. Some skins will require more recent releases of browsers. The default skin (Pattern) is tested on IE 6, and Mozilla 5.0 based browsers (such as Firefox).
You can easily select a balance of browser capability versus look and feel.
Important note about TWiki Plugins
- 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.
-
Note: Plugins included in the TWiki distribution do not add requirements.
Related Topics: AdminDocumentationCategory