+Solanum is designed with portability in mind, but does not target older systems nor those of solely academic
+interest.
+
+Do note that operating systems are only supported if they are supported by their vendor.
+
+## Tier 1
+
+These platforms are the best supported, and should always work. They are actively tested. If you encounter
+problems, please file a bug.
+
+* FreeBSD 10.x and above (i386 and amd64)
+* Linux 2.6.x and above with glibc or musl (i386, x86_64, and ARM)
+* macOS 10.7 and above
+* Windows Vista/Server 2008 and above (x86 or x64)
+
+## Tier 2
+
+These platforms are supported and occasionally tested, and most features should work, but this is not
+guaranteed. If you find any problems, file a bug, but as these are not regularly tested platforms, a timely
+resolution may not be possible.
+
+* DragonflyBSD 4.4 and above (i386)
+* Linux with uClibc (i386 or x86_64)
+* NetBSD 6.1.x and above (i386, amd64)
+* OpenBSD 5.6 and above (i386, amd64)
+* Solaris 10 and above (i386)
+
+## Tier 3
+
+Anything else that hasn't been tested. Solanum may or may not work on it; patches welcome if they don't.
+
+# platform specific errata
+
+These are known issues and workarounds for supported platforms.
+
+ * **macOS**: you must set the `LIBTOOLIZE` environment variable to point to glibtoolize before running autogen.sh:
+
+ ```bash
+ brew install libtool
+ export LIBTOOLIZE="/usr/local/bin/glibtoolize"
+ ./autogen.sh
+ ```
+
+ * **FreeBSD**: if you are compiling with ipv6 you may experience
+ problems with ipv4 due to the way the socket code is written. To
+ fix this you must: `sysctl net.inet6.ip6.v6only=0`
+
+ * **Solaris**: you may have to set your `PATH` to include `/usr/gnu/bin` and `/usr/gnu/sbin` before `/usr/bin`
+ and `/usr/sbin`. Solaris's default tools don't seem to play nicely with the configure script.
+
+# building
+
+```bash
+./autogen.sh
+./configure --prefix=/path/to/installation
+make
+make check # run tests
+make install
+```
+
+See `./configure --help` for build options.