------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--                                                                          --
--                           POLYORB COMPONENTS                             --
--                                                                          --
--         Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.           --
--                                                                          --
-- PolyORB is free software; you  can  redistribute  it and/or modify it    --
-- under terms of the  GNU General Public License as published by the  Free --
-- Software Foundation;  either version 2,  or (at your option)  any  later --
-- version. PolyORB is distributed  in the hope that it will be  useful,    --
-- but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;  without even the implied warranty of MERCHAN- --
-- TABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public --
-- License  for more details.  You should have received  a copy of the GNU  --
-- General Public License distributed with PolyORB; see file COPYING. If    --
-- not, write to the Free Software Foundation, 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, --
-- Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.                                              --
--                                                                          --
-- As a special exception,  if other files  instantiate  generics from this --
-- unit, or you link  this unit with other files  to produce an executable, --
-- this  unit  does not  by itself cause  the resulting  executable  to  be --
-- covered  by the  GNU  General  Public  License.  This exception does not --
-- however invalidate  any other reasons why  the executable file  might be --
-- covered by the  GNU Public License.                                      --
--                                                                          --
--                  PolyORB is maintained by AdaCore                        --
--                     (email: sales@adacore.com)                           --
--                                                                          --
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the README file for PolyORB version @polyorb_version@.

The home page of the project is located at http://libre.adacore.com/polyorb/
This is where you can find news about the project, new releases, and
pointers to several documents and papers related to PolyORB.

What is PolyORB?
----------------

PolyORB is a polymorphic, reusable infrastructure for building
object-oriented distributed systems.  Middleware environments are
software libraries that hide the complex issues of distribution
and provide the programmer with high-level abstractions that allow
easy and transparent construction of distributed applications.
A number of different standards exist for creating object-oriented
distributed applications.  These standards define two things:

    * the interface seen by the developer's applicative objects;
    * the protocol used by the middleware environment to talk to other
      nodes in the distributed application.

Usually, middleware for one platform supports only one set of
such interfaces, and cannot interoperate with other platforms.

A polymorphic middleware allows the existence of several different
implementations of each of these aspects to be used within the same
middleware framework.  In addition, PolyORB allows such different
personalities to coexist in the same instance of the running middleware;
it decouples the personality presented to applications on one side
("application personality"), and the personality presented
to other middleware on the other side ("protocol personality").
Multiple implementations of each personalisable aspect can
coexist within the same instance of the running middleware:
unlike previous generic middleware, PolyORB is actually schizophrenic.

The decoupling of application and protocol personalities, and the support
for multiple simultaneous personalities within the same running middleware
are key features required for the construction of interoperable
distributed applications.  This allows PolyORB to communicate
with middleware that implement different distribution standards:
PolyORB provides middleware-to-middleware interoperability.

The PolyORB architecture also permits the automatic,
just-in-time creation of proxies between incompatible environments
(although this feature is not implemented yet).

Installation
------------

See INSTALL file for more details on supported platforms and installation
process.

Documentation overview
----------------------

README      : This file, first instructions.
INSTALL     : Detail PolyORB installation process.
NEWS        : Detail updates between PolyORB's releases.
              Includes listing of new features, fixed bugs and incompatible
              changes in each release.
FEATURES    : List PolyORB's features.
src/ROADMAP : Overview of PolyORB source code.
docs/*      : Documents describing PolyORB internals, including
              PolyORB User's Guide.

Usage of PolyORB
----------------

See the PolyORB User's Guide for more details on PolyORB usage.

Bug reports
-----------

If you find a bug or would like to submit patches, please do so indicating 
the release you use. We accept patch files. To produce such a patch file, 
put your files in the PolyORB directory and our files in the directory 
PolyORB.orig, and use the following command:

  diff --recursive --context PolyORB.orig PolyORB > patch_file

If your diff version do not understand the --recursive or --context
option, please use the GNU diffutils package which may be found on any
GNU archive (e.g. ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/gnu/).

Note that unified diff files (-u option of GNU diff) are also welcomed.

Unsupported users may directly send their patches and bug report via
e-mail at the address

	polyorb-bugs@lists.adacore.com

Please use the Problem Report Form in docs/PROBLEM-REPORT-FORM.

If you are interested in becoming a supported PolyORB user, you should
send an email to sales@adacore.com.

Mailing-lists
-------------

The mailing-list PolyORB-Users serves as a informal forum for
technical discussions about PolyORB among users.

You can subscribe to this list and browse the archive at the URL:

http://lists.adacore.com/mailman/listinfo/polyorb-users

Contributors:
-------------

PolyORB has been developed since January, 1999 by the following
contributors:

* Nicolas Archambault
* Fabien Azavant
* Benjamin Bagland
* Khaled Barbaria
* Emmanuel Chavane
* Karim Chine
* Jean-Marie Cottin
* Olivier Delalleau
* Cyril Domercq
* Michael Friess
* Nicolas Fritsch
* Jeremy Gibbons
* Vadim Godunko
* Jerome Guitton
* Jerome Hugues
* Mejdi Kaddour
* Fabrice Kordon
* Narinder Kumar 
* Laurent Kubler
* Lionel Litty
* Vincent Niebel
* Pierre Palatin
* Bertrand Paquet
* Laurent Pautet
* Sebastien Ponce
* Jerome Roussel
* Thomas Quinot
* Nicolas Roche
* Nicolas Setton
* Frank Singhoff 
* Samuel Tardieu
* Selvaratnam Senthuran 
* Thomas Vergnaud
* Florian Villoing
* Guillaume Wisniewski
* Bechir Zalila
