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# <a name="TWiki_Requirements"> TWiki Requirements </a>

_Server and client system requirements; file system structure_

## <a name="Overview"> Overview </a>

Maintaining minimum client and server requirements is necessary to keep TWiki deployment as broad as possible.

## <a name="Server_Side_Requirements"> Server-Side Requirements </a>

TWiki is written in Perl 5 and uses a number of shell commands. It requires GNU RCS (Revision Control System) to be installed on the same system. TWiki is developed in a standard Linux/Apache environment. It can also work with Microsoft Windows and other platforms.

<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0">
  <tr>
    <th bgcolor="#99CCCC" colspan="3"><strong>Required Server Environment</strong></th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <th bgcolor="#99CCCC"><strong>Resource</strong></th>
    <th bgcolor="#99CCCC"><strong>Unix</strong></th>
    <th bgcolor="#99CCCC"><strong>Windows</strong></th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td> Perl </td>
    <td align="center" colspan="2"> 5.005_03 or higher </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td> Non standard Perl modules </td>
    <td align="center"><code>Net::SMTP</code> (or <code>sendmail</code>) </td>
    <td align="right"><code>Net::SMTP</code>, <code>MIME::Base64</code>, <code>Digest::SHA1</code></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td> RCS </td>
    <td align="center" colspan="2"> 5.7 or higher </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td> Other external programs </td>
    <td align="center" colspan="2"><code>ls, fgrep, egrep</code></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td> Web server </td>
    <td align="center" colspan="2"> Apache; others (with support for CGI, authentication, extended path) <strong>*</strong></td>
  </tr>
</table>

Current documentation covers Linux only. Compiling a basic [TWikiOnWindows](http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiOnWindows) installation guide is an ongoing effort.

## <a name="Client_Side_Requirements"> Client-Side Requirements </a>

The TWiki standard installation has extremely low browser requirements:

* HTML 3.2 compliant
* minimal use of JavaScript in the user interface (degrades gracefully)
* no cookies
* no CSS

TWiki generates XHTML 1.0 code as long as it is compatible with HTML 3.2.

## <a name="Known_Issues"> Known Issues </a>

* The new [[TWikiPlugins]] feature currently does not have any compatibility guidelines for developers. Plugins can require just about anything: browser-specific functions, stylesheets (CSS), Java, cookies, etc.

-- [[MikeMannix]] - 29 Aug 2001