1 ## Identifying your system ##
3 We'll assume you're using either Mac OS X, or Windows, or Linux.
5 If you're using **Mac OS X**, take note of what version of the Mac OS you're
6 running. (Under the Apple Menu, select "About this Mac".)
11 * Mountain Lion (10.8)
15 If you're running **iOS**, you probably can't use this software on that machine. (A bit more below.)
17 Furthermore, you'll be in one of two subgroups:
19 * You'll have Apple's Xcode and the independent MacPorts system
20 installed. (Probably you don't. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't have these.)
22 If you don't have these, but want to try this route, you can read about
23 the MacPorts system at <http://www.macports.org/>.
24 This automates the building of Unix-type software on your Mac; it
25 makes it a lot easier to check for dependencies, use more-recent
26 versions of things, and so on. (Though as it happens, MacPorts only has an older version of
27 our chosen implementation of Scheme.)
29 There are also other package management systems available for the Mac, notably Homebrew and Fink. I only know a little bit about them.
32 <http://developer.apple.com/technologies/tools/xcode.html>. Some
33 versions of this have been available for free, though you do have to
34 register with Apple as an "Apple Developer", which involves accepting a
35 legal agreement with Apple. I have an older version of this installed.
36 If you download a recent version, email me and let me know how the
37 process works so I can tell others. There are instructions about how to
38 get Xcode in the MacPorts installation guide.
40 The latest version of Xcode to work with Leopard is 3.14; more
41 recent versions (>= 3.2) require Snow Leopard. 3.2.6 is last version that can be downloaded for free by users of 10.6 / Snow Leopard. (But if they pay, they can use up to Xcode 4.2.)
42 Xcode 4.1 was free to all users of 10.7 / Lion. Is Xcode 4.6.x still available for free? Are Xcode 5.x and/or 6.x available for free?
45 * Or you won't have those installed. (**Most Mac users will be in this group.**)
46 Then you'll need pre-packaged (and usually pretty GUI) installers for
47 everything. These are great when they're available and kept up-to-date;
48 however sometimes those conditions aren't met.
52 If you're using **Windows**, you'll be in one of two subgroups:
54 * You'll have the Cygwin system
55 <http://www.cygwin.com/> installed.
56 This puts a Unix-like layer on top of your Windows system,
57 and makes it easier for you to use the same software everybody
58 else will be using, without its needing as much special-for-Windows
59 treatment. However, many of you won't have this installed.
61 * You won't have Cygwin installed. You might in theory have
62 a different group of compilers installed (MinGW, or Microsoft Visual C++) but
63 we'll assume that the overwhelming majority of users in this group
64 don't have access to a compiler and need pre-packaged installers
67 If you're using **Linux**, you could be using any one of numerous packaging
70 * We'll give examples using the packaging system shared by Debian and Ubuntu,
71 and we'll assume that those of you using different packaging systems will know
72 how to make the relevant substitutions. You may also want to take note of the
73 output of the "uname -srm" command. On my machine this tells me "Linux
74 3.12.8-extrastuff x86\_64". That tells me I'm running the x86\_64 (as opposed to the
75 i686 or i386 or whatever) version of Linux, and that I'm running kernel
78 **For all of these groups**, a general item to take note of is what "processor architecture" your machine is running. Three of the possibilities are:
80 * One of Intel's i386, i486, i586, i686 architectures. These are collectively known as "x86" or "IA-32" or sometimes just "32-bit".
81 * Intel or AMD's x86\_64 architecture. This is sometimes also called "x64" or "amd64" or "IA-64" or sometimes just "64-bit".
82 * ARM or some other architecture. These are generally lower-powered machines, like iPads. Some of the software we're proposing *might* in principle be capable of running on such machines, but installers don't seem to be available. We'll assume you have access to an x86 or x86\_64 machine.
84 In the Linux example above, I could tell my machine is running x86 because the
85 result of the `uname` command said "i386" at the end. Another machine I have
86 says "x86\_64" at the end. On a Mac, you can also say `uname -m` in a Terminal
87 session, and it will say something like "i386". I think that Mac OS Xs from Lion
88 / 10.7 forward have all been x86\_64-only. On Windows, I don't know how to
89 collect this information. But generally, machines running Windows XP will
90 probably be i386/32-bit (unless it's a version of Windows with "64-bit" or
91 "x64" in its title); machines running Windows Vista or Windows 7 or Windows 8
92 could be running either x86/32-bit or x64/64-bit.
94 [this Microsoft page](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/32-bit-and-64-bit-windows)
98 ## PLEASE REPORT PROBLEMS (AND SOLUTIONS!) ##
100 We haven't tested these instructions ourselves, and they're not explicit
101 step-by-step instructions in any case. If you encounter troubles, please email
102 to let us know so that we can amend the instructions to help others. If you
103 figure out how to fix the problem youself (and please do), please also write
104 with suggestions how we can change these instructions to make the process
105 easier and more straightforward for others.
110 **Scheme** is one of two or three major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family
111 of programming languages. The other dialects are called "Common Lisp" and "Clojure".
112 Scheme is the more clean and minimalist dialect, and is what's mostly used in
114 Scheme itself has umpteen different "implementations", which share most of
115 their fundamentals, but have slightly different extensions and interact with
116 the operating system differently. One major implementation is called Racket,
117 and that is what we recommend you use. (A few years back they were called PLT Scheme, but then
118 they changed their name to Racket.)
119 If you're already using or comfortable with
120 another Scheme implementation, though, there's no compelling reason to switch.
122 If for some reason you have problems with Racket, other implementations you could
124 [Chicken](http://www.call-cc.org),
125 [Gauche](http://practical-scheme.net/gauche),
126 or [Chibi](https://code.google.com/p/chibi-scheme). The later in that list you go, the more likely it
127 is that you'll have to compile the software yourself. (Thus Mac users will need Xcode.)
129 Racket stands to Scheme in something like the relation Firefox stands to HTML. It's one program among others for working with the language; and many of those programs (or web browsers) permit different extensions, have small variations, and so on.
131 Racket has several components. The two most visible components for us are a command-line interpreter named "racket" and a teaching-friendly editor/front-end named "DrRacket". You will probably be working primarily or wholly in the latter.
132 <!-- "racket" used to be mzscheme, "DrRacket" used to be DrScheme -->
134 The current version of Racket is 6.1.1 (released November 2014).
136 * In your web browser:
138 There is a (slow, bare-bones) version of Scheme available for online use at <http://tryscheme.sourceforge.net/>.
140 * **To install in Windows**
142 Go to <http://racket-lang.org/download/>. Download and install the "Windows x64" version. (Or the "Windows x86" verson if you have an older, 32-bit system.)
144 * **To install on Mac without MacPorts**
146 Go to <http://racket-lang.org/download/>. Download and install the option for your system, most likely "Macintosh
147 OS X (Intel 64-bit)".
149 * **To install on Mac with MacPorts**
151 Unfortunately, MacPorts doesn't have Racket itself available. It only has an older version from when they still called
152 themselves PLT Scheme. And even then, it only has the command-line program "mzscheme" (what's nowadays called "racket"); it
153 doesn't have the GUI program that corresponds to what's now called "DrRacket". You can install mzscheme by opening a Terminal
156 sudo port install mzscheme
158 If you want the GUI components, I think you'll need to use the
159 "Mac/without MacPorts" installation options above.
161 I recommend also typing:
163 sudo port install rlwrap
165 then if you ever use the command-line program `mzscheme` (or `racket`), you should start it by typing `rlwrap mzscheme`. This gives
166 you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
169 * **To install on Linux**
171 Use your packaging system, for example, open a Terminal and
174 sudo apt-get install racket
176 It's very likely that your packaging system has some version of
177 Racket available, so look for it. However, if you can't find it you
178 can also install a pre-packaged binary from the Racket website at <http://racket-lang.org/download/>.
179 Choose the option for your version of Linux (Ubuntu and Debian are available).
181 As above, I recommend you also type:
185 then if you ever use the command-line program `mzscheme` (or `racket`), you should start it by typing `rlwrap mzscheme`. This gives
186 you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
192 **Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large family of
193 programming languages. The other dialect is called "SML" and has several
194 implementations. But Caml has only one active implementation, OCaml or
195 Objective Caml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France.
196 Sometimes we may refer to Caml or ML
197 more generally; but you can assume that what we're talking about always works more
198 specifically in OCaml.
200 It's helpful if in addition to OCaml you also install the Findlib add-on.
201 This will make it easier to install additional add-ons further down the road.
202 However, if you're not able to get that working, don't worry about it much.
204 The current version of OCaml is 4.02.1 (released October 2014).
206 Another instruction page focuses on [OPAM](http://ocaml.org/docs/install.html), also [this](https://opam.ocaml.org).
208 * In your web browser:
210 There is a (slow, bare-bones) version of OCaml available for online use at <http://try.ocamlpro.com/>.
212 * **To install in Windows**
214 Go to <http://caml.inria.fr/download.en.html>.
215 You can probably download and install the
216 "Self installer for the port based on the MinGW toolchain"
217 even if you don't know what MinGW or Cygwin are.
218 Some features of this require Cygwin, but it looks like
219 it should mostly work even for users without Cygwin.
220 At the time of this writing, only an installer for the previous
221 version of OCaml (3.11.0, from January 2010) is available.
223 To install the Findlib add-on, you must have the
224 Cygwin system installed. We assume few of you do,
225 so we're not going to try to explain how to do this.
226 If you want to figure it out yourself, go to the
227 Findlib website at <http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/findlib.html>.
229 * **To install on Mac without MacPorts**
231 To install OCaml 3.12 (just released this summer), go to
232 <http://caml.inria.fr/download.en.html>
233 and download and install the "Binary distribution for Mac OS X"
235 To install the Findlib add-on, you'll need the Xcode development tools
236 to compile it yourself. Once you get that far, it's probably easiest
237 for you to install MacPorts and just install things using the MacPorts
238 instructions. (Use the MacPorts version of OCaml, instead of installing
239 the package from the caml.inria.fr website, as described above)
240 However, if you do have Xcode, and want to do without MacPorts, then
241 what you need to do is download Findlib from
242 <http://download.camlcity.org/download/findlib-1.2.6.tar.gz>.
243 Unpack the download, open a Terminal and go into the folder you just
249 This will build an installer package which you should be able to
250 double-click and install.
252 * **To install on Mac with MacPorts**
254 You can install the previous version of OCaml (3.11.2,
255 from January 2010), together with the Findlib add-on, by opening a Terminal
258 sudo port install ocaml caml-findlib
260 As with Scheme, it's helpful to also have rlwrap installed, and to start OCaml as `rlwrap ocaml`. This gives
261 you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
264 * [More details about installing OCaml on Macs, if needed](http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_mac_os_x)
266 * **To install on Linux**
268 Use your packaging system, for example, open a Terminal and
271 sudo apt-get install ocaml ocaml-findlib
273 That will install a version of OCaml and the Findlib add-on.
275 If for some reason you can't get OCaml through your
276 packaging system, you can go to
277 <http://caml.inria.fr/download.en.html>.
278 Pre-packaged binary installers are available for several Linux systems.
280 If you can't get findlib through your packaging system, you'll
281 need to download it from
282 <http://download.camlcity.org/download/findlib-1.2.6.tar.gz>.
283 and use gcc to compile it yourself. If you don't know how to
284 do that, you probably don't want to attempt this.
285 Here are the INSTALL notes:
286 <https://godirepo.camlcity.org/svn/lib-findlib/trunk/INSTALL>.
288 As with Scheme, it's helpful to also have rlwrap installed, and to start OCaml as `rlwrap ocaml`. This gives
289 you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
293 ## Getting Haskell ##
295 This last step is less crucial than the others, since we will be focusing
296 primarily on Scheme and OCaml. However we, and the readings you come across,
297 will sometimes mention Haskell, so it might be worth your installing this too,
298 so that you have it available to play around with.
300 Haskell is used a lot in the academic contexts we'll be working through. At one point, Scheme
301 dominated these discussions but now Haskell seems to do that.
303 Haskell's surface syntax differs from Caml, and there are various important things one can do in
304 each of Haskell and Caml that one can't (or can't as easily) do in the
305 other. But these languages also have *a lot* in common, and if you're
306 familiar with one of them, it's generally not hard to move between it and the
309 * In your web browser:
311 There is a (slow, bare-bones) version of Haskell available for online use at <http://tryhaskell.org/>.
313 sudo apk-get install haskell-platform
315 <https://github.com/pittsburgh-haskell/haskell-installation>
317 <https://www.haskell.org/platform>
319 Getting started: <https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_in_5_steps>