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
11 * Mountain Lion (10.8)
15 Furthermore, you'll be in one of two subgroups:
17 * You'll have Apple's Xcode and the independent MacPorts system
18 installed. (Probably you don't. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you don't have these.)
21 <http://developer.apple.com/technologies/tools/xcode.html>. Some versions of this have been available for free, though you do have to register with Apple as an "Apple Developer", which involves accepting a legal agreement with Apple. I have an older version of this installed. If you download a recent version, email me and let me know how the process works so I can tell others. There are instructions about how to get Xcode in the MacPorts installation guide (see below).
23 The latest version of Xcode to work with Leopard is 3.14; more
24 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.)
25 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?
28 The MacPorts system is available at
29 <http://www.macports.org/>.
30 This automates the building of Unix-type software on your Mac; it
31 makes it a lot easier to check for dependencies, use more-recent
32 versions of things, and so on.
34 * Or you won't have those installed. (Most Mac users will be in this group.)
35 Then you'll need pre-packaged (and usually pretty GUI) installers for
36 everything. These are great when they're available and kept up-to-date;
37 however those conditions aren't always met.
40 If you're using **Windows**, you'll be in one of two subgroups:
42 * You'll have the Cygwin system
43 <http://www.cygwin.com/> installed.
44 This puts a Unix-like layer on top of your Windows system,
45 and makes it easier for you to use the same software everybody
46 else will be using, without its needing as much special-for-Windows
47 treatment. However, many of you won't have this installed.
49 * You won't have Cygwin installed. You might in theory have
50 a different group of compilers installed (Microsoft Visual C++) but
51 we'll assume that the overwhelming majority of users in this group
52 don't have access to a compiler and need pre-packaged installers
55 If you're using **Linux**, you could be using any one of numerous packaging
58 * We'll give examples using the packaging system shared by Debian and Ubuntu,
59 and we'll assume that those of you using different packaging systems will know
60 how to make the relevant substitutions. You may also want to take note of the
61 output of the "uname -srm" command. On my machine this tells me "Linux
62 3.12.8-extrastuff x86\_64". That tells me I'm running the x86\_64 (as opposed to the
63 i686 or i386 or whatever) version of Linux, and that I'm running kernel
68 ## PLEASE REPORT PROBLEMS (AND SOLUTIONS!) ##
70 We haven't tested these instructions ourselves, and they're not explicit
71 step-by-step instructions in any case. If you encounter troubles, please email
72 to let us know so that we can amend the instructions to help others. If you
73 figure out how to fix the problem youself (and please do), please also write
74 with suggestions how we can change these instructions to make the process
75 easier and more straightforward for others.
80 **Scheme** is one of two major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family of
81 programming languages. The other dialect is called "Common Lisp." Scheme is the
82 more clean and minimalistic dialect, and is what's mostly used in academic
85 Scheme itself has umpteen different "implementations", which share most of
86 their fundamentals, but have slightly different extensions and interact with
87 the operating system differently. One major implementation used to be called
88 PLT Scheme, but then a few years ago changed their name to Racket.
89 This is what we recommend you use. (If you're already using or comfortable with
90 another Scheme implementation, though, there's no compelling reason to switch.)
92 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.
94 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.
96 <!-- racket used to be mzscheme, DrRacket used to be DrScheme -->
98 * In your web browser:
100 There is a (slow, bare-bones) version of Scheme available for online use at <http://tryscheme.sourceforge.net/>.
103 * **To install in Windows**
105 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.)
107 * **To install on Mac without MacPorts**
109 Go to <http://racket-lang.org/download/>. Download and install the option for your system, most likely "Macintosh
110 OS X (Intel 64-bit)".
112 * **To install on Mac with MacPorts**
114 You can install a command-line version of
115 PLT Scheme (dating from early 2009) by opening a Terminal
118 sudo port install mzscheme
120 If you want the GUI components, I think you'll need to use the
121 "Mac/without MacPorts" installation options above.
123 I recommend also typing:
125 sudo port install rlwrap
127 then if you ever use the command-line program `mzscheme` (or `racket`), you should start it by typing `rlwrap mzscheme`. This gives
128 you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
131 * **To install on Linux**
133 Use your packaging system, for example, open a Terminal and
136 sudo apt-get install racket
138 It's very likely that your packaging system has some version of
139 Racket available, so look for it. However, if you can't find it you
140 can also install a pre-packaged binary from the Racket website at <http://racket-lang.org/download/>.
141 Choose the option for your version of Linux (Ubuntu and Debian are available).
143 As above, I recommend you also type:
147 then if you ever use the command-line program `mzscheme` (or `racket`), you should start it by typing `rlwrap mzscheme`. This gives
148 you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
154 **Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large family of
155 programming languages. The other dialect is called "SML" and has several
156 implementations. But Caml has only one active implementation, OCaml or
157 Objective Caml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France.
160 *Will add more information about this soon.*
164 It's helpful if in addition to OCaml you also install the Findlib add-on.
165 This will make it easier to install additional add-ons further down the road.
166 However, if you're not able to get that working, don't worry about it much.
169 * **To install in Windows**
171 Go to <http://caml.inria.fr/download.en.html>.
172 You can probably download and install the
173 "Self installer for the port based on the MinGW toolchain"
174 even if you don't know what MinGW or Cygwin are.
175 Some features of this require Cygwin, but it looks like
176 it should mostly work even for users without Cygwin.
177 At the time of this writing, only an installer for the previous
178 version of OCaml (3.11.0, from January 2010) is available.
180 To install the Findlib add-on, you must have the
181 Cygwin system installed. We assume few of you do,
182 so we're not going to try to explain how to do this.
183 If you want to figure it out yourself, go to the
184 Findlib website at <http://projects.camlcity.org/projects/findlib.html>.
186 * **To install on Mac without MacPorts**
188 To install OCaml 3.12 (just released this summer), go to
189 <http://caml.inria.fr/download.en.html>
190 and download and install the "Binary distribution for Mac OS X"
192 To install the Findlib add-on, you'll need the Xcode development tools
193 to compile it yourself. Once you get that far, it's probably easiest
194 for you to install MacPorts and just install things using the MacPorts
195 instructions. (Use the MacPorts version of OCaml, instead of installing
196 the package from the caml.inria.fr website, as described above)
197 However, if you do have Xcode, and want to do without MacPorts, then
198 what you need to do is download Findlib from
199 <http://download.camlcity.org/download/findlib-1.2.6.tar.gz>.
200 Unpack the download, open a Terminal and go into the folder you just
206 This will build an installer package which you should be able to
207 double-click and install.
209 * **To install on Mac with MacPorts**
211 You can install the previous version of OCaml (3.11.2,
212 from January 2010), together with the Findlib add-on, by opening a Terminal
215 sudo port install ocaml caml-findlib
217 As with Scheme, it's helpful to also have rlwrap installed, and to start OCaml as `rlwrap ocaml`. This gives
218 you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your
222 * [More details about installing OCaml on Macs, if needed](http://cocan.org/getting_started_with_ocaml_on_mac_os_x)
224 * **To install on Linux**
226 Use your packaging system, for example, open a Terminal and
229 sudo apt-get install ocaml ocaml-findlib
231 That will install a version of OCaml (probably 3.11.2, from January 2010)
232 and the Findlib add-on.
234 If for some reason you can't get OCaml through your
235 packaging system, you can go to
236 <http://caml.inria.fr/download.en.html>.
237 Pre-packaged binary installers are available for several Linux systems.
239 If you can't get findlib through your packaging system, you'll
240 need to download it from
241 <http://download.camlcity.org/download/findlib-1.2.6.tar.gz>.
242 and use gcc to compile it yourself. If you don't know how to
243 do that, you probably don't want to attempt this.
244 Here are the INSTALL notes:
245 <https://godirepo.camlcity.org/svn/lib-findlib/trunk/INSTALL>.
247 As with Scheme, it's helpful to also have rlwrap installed, and to start OCaml as `rlwrap ocaml`. This gives
248 you a nice history of the commands you've already typed, which you can scroll up and down in with your