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	5.10.1 or higher
RCS	5.7 or higher (including GNU diff) Optional, TWiki includes a pure Perl implementation of RCS that can be used instead (although 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
GNU df	Used by the site statistics to record disk usage statistics, optional. The df command is pre-installed on Linux and OS-X. On Windows install the CoreUtils for Windows.
GNU patch	For upgrades only: GNU patch is required when using the TWiki:Codev.UpgradeTWiki script
GNU fgrep, egrep	Modify command line parameters in configure if you use non-GNU grep programs
zip	Zip archive command line utility. Used by the BackupRestorePlugin to create and restore from backups.
Cron/scheduler	• Unix: cron • Windows: cron equivalents <-- SMELL: Macintosh version? -->
Web server	Apache is well supported; see TWiki:TWiki.InstallingTWiki#OtherWebServers for other servers

Required CPAN Modules

Most of the CPAN libraries listesd below are part of a standard Perl installation so you most likely have them all!

See TWiki:TWiki.HowToInstallCpanModules for detailed information on how to install CPAN libraries

The following Perl CPAN modules are used by TWiki:

Module	Preferred version	Comment
Algorithm::Diff		Included in TWiki distribution
CGI	>=3.18 & <=4.03	A suitable version ships with TWiki since TWiki-6.0.2 using CgiContrib, e.g. it is no longer necessary to install or downgrade this module. Versions 2.89 and 3.37, as well as version > 4.13 must be avoided.
CGI::Carp	>=1.26
Config	>=0
Cwd	>=3.05
Data::Dumper	>=2.121
Encode	>=2.1
Error		Included in TWiki distribution
File::Copy	>=2.06
File::Find	>=1.05
File::Spec	>=3.05
File::Temp	>=0.18	This version included in Perl 5.9.5. File::Temp needs to be updated on RedHat 5 and CentOS 5.
FileHandle	>=2.01
HTML::Parser	>=3.28	Needed by the WysiwygPlugin for WYSIWYG editing
HTML::Entities	>=1.25	Needed by the WysiwygPlugin for WYSIWYG editing; part of the HTML::Parser package.
IO::File	>=1.10
LWP		Needed to install extensions in TWiki configure
Net::SMTP	>=2.29	Used for sending mail
Text::Diff		Included in TWiki distribution
Time::Local	>=1.11

Optional CPAN Modules

The following Perl modules may be used by TWiki:

See TWiki:TWiki.HowToInstallCpanModules for detailed information on how to install CPAN libraries

Module	Preferred version	Description
Archive::Tar		May be required by the Extensions Installer in configure if command line tar or unzip is not available
Authen::SASL		Used for SMTP Authentication
CGI::Cookie	>=1.24	Used for session support
CGI::Session	>=3.95	Used for session support
Crypt::SMIME	>=0.09	Required if S/MIME-signed administrative e-mail is enabled.
Digest::base
Digest::SHA1
JSON	>=2.0	Required if TWikiSheetPlugin is used, or if JSON objects are stored and retrieved in SetGetPlugin
Locale::Maketext::Lexicon	>=0	Used for I18N support
Net::SMTP	>=2.29	Used for sending mail
URI		Used for configure

Most of them will probably already be available in your installation. You can check version numbers with the configure script, or if you're still trying to get to that point, check from the command line like this:

perl -e 'use FileHandle; print $FileHandle::VERSION."\n"'

<--
SMELL: perhaps put download link to TWiki:Plugins.CpanContrib? (which 
also includes prebuilt versions of all of the CPAN modules used by 
all of the plugins checked into SVN)
-->

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, although there is a low-fat skin (Classic skin) available that minimizes these requirements. Some skins will require more recent releases of browsers. The default skin (Pattern) is tested on IE 6, Safari, and Mozilla 5.0 based browsers (such as Firefox).

<--
SMELL: what are some actual known good version number requirements for these browsers (eg, FireFox 1.0, or 1.0.3, or 1.0.7, or ???), etc.
-->

You can easily select a balance of browser capability versus look and feel. Try the installed skins at TWikiSkinBrowser and more at TWiki:Plugins.SkinPackage.

Important note about TWiki Plugins

• Plugins can require just about anything - browser-specific functions, stylesheets (CSS), Java applets, cookies, specific Perl modules,... - check the individual Plugin specs.