REQUIRMENTS:  

Don't get intimidated, this is just to cover all bases, most computer
systems meet the requirements.

PERL:  Yes, preferably Perl 5.004.04 or greater.   

FTP CAPABILITIES: (optional) You may need to get Net::FTP (Debian
libnet-perl package) which depends on Data::Dumper (Debian data-dumper
package). Also check the CPAN mirrors or the PACKAGES below.  You also
need gcc if you do not have a Debian system so that swim can figure out
what architecture your machine is. You can also find these modules at the
CPAN mirrors or the PACKAGES below. 

READLINE CAPABILITIES: (optional) For nice readline cpabilities get
Term::ReadLine::Gnu or alternatively Term::ReadLine::Perl which depends on
Term::ReadKey.  Term::ReadLine::Gnu may be tricky to set-up on non Debian
systems because it depends on ncurses3.4 and the GNU Readline Library
version 2.1 or later, but Term::ReadLine::Perl is much easier to set-up
and allows a huge amount of package names to be present on the command
line without a segmentation fault. You could get swim's ftp capabilities
working first, and then just fetch the Debian ReadLine package(s) and then
use swim's --extract option to set the package(s) up, but, it is sure fun
doing a 'make test' when setting up the ReadLine modules! You can also
find these modules at the CPAN mirrors or the PACKAGES below. 

DATABASE CAPABILITIES:  DB_File comes standard with Perl.  But, this
doesn't mean it is compiled for the newer Berkeley Database Libraries. DB
1.85 has known bugs which effect SWIM.  SWIM can work with 1.85, but
--rebuildflatdb and --rebuildflatndb will not work properly.  You can run
a test to find out whether or not you need to make the change if you have
db_dump available on your system (which db_dump). Enter this: 

perl -e 'use DB_File; tie %testdb,'DB_File',"testdb";';
db_dump testdb

If 'db_dump testdb' produces an error you need to make the change by
installing the newest DB_File.  If you have a version of libc6 less than
2.1, first, install a new version (2.3.4 or greater) of the Berkeley DB if
you don't already have it installed.  If you get DB_File from CPAN you
will need to edit config.in to point to the location of where libdb2
installed db.h, where libdb2 is installed on your system, and the name of
the library.  For Debian this would be: 

INCLUDE = /usr/include/db2
LIB = /usr/lib 
DBNAME = -ldb2 

PACKAGES - You can get the CPAN modules in some package formats.  Debian
2.1 and Red Hat 5.0 have been tested with these packages: 

Debian -

libnet-perl and
data-dumper and
libterm-readline-gnu-perl (plus a lot more) or
libterm-readline-perl-perl and
libterm-readkey-perl
libdb2    
  
Red Hat -

perl-libnet and
perl-Data-Dumper
db-?

USER: root.  Some of swim's most important functions will not work
properly unless you are running the program as root.   

HARD DRIVE SPACE: Make sure you have enough hard drive space.  1500
installed packages produces a 10MB fileindex.deb, and the virtual
not-installed filesystem database for the unstable distribution is now
over 40MB.  100MB of free space on your hard drive is probably a good
safety margin, if you run out of hard drive space the program will just
hang or quit. 

MEMORY: Databases made for an installed Debian system require memory in
proportion to the amount of packages actually installed; the --lowmem
option is an excellent alternative for making the databases if the
computer system is either overloaded or low on memory.  If you get "out of
memory" warnings try to free up some memory first then make the databases. 
You can also avoid making the virtual filesystem by not using the
--Contents option or using the FDB argument for that option.  Updating the
databases uses very little memory. 

OTHER SWIM FUNCTIONS:  Most free operating systems have these packages
installed:  On a non Debian system, ar from binutils is used to query
Debian binary packages. These next packages are essential in a free
operating system (Linux) - textutils, fileutils, grep, tar, gzip, and
mount.