Hi folks,
I'm going ahead and throwing out a full binary distribution of a
*pretest* of Swarm 2.2 for Windows.
The archive below includes a build of the latest Swarm source code,
which is stable and has many, many bug fixes from Swarm 2.1.1. For
both Java and Objective C users, there are major performance
improvements. I use this code daily in our research and it gets a
beating.
Objective C users may opts for this tree instead of an upgraded 2.1.1
install because this package will not require clumsy synchronization
of header files. (Java is easier since there is just the .jar file
and the javaswarm.dll.)
To use it, you should be familiar with Cygwin `mounts'. The archive
below is just the raw tree of the new binaries, and there is no
support code to guide the installation. I'll work on that as soon as
I can, but since the Labor day weekend draws to a close, I must return
to my real job. "It's not just an adventure, it's also a job!"
But really, it's not a big deal to change the mounts. Anyone that is
prepared to write Java simulations will figure it out in twenty minutes.
So, first unmount /bin, and / if you have one. Once /bin and / are
unmounted, do an installation of the latest version of Cygwin (if you
don't unmount /bin and / Cygwin will damage the 2.1.1 installation).
Then unpack this tarball
ftp://ftp.swarm.org/pub/swarm/binaries/w32/latest/Swarm-2.2-pretest.tar.gz
..and make a mount so that /Swarm-2.2 is a valid Cygwin path.
Then set SWARMHOME to /Swarm-2.2 and add /Swarm-2.2/bin to your PATH.
Use the Cygwin terminal instead of the Swarm terminal from 2.1.1.
My inclination for the actual release is to abandon the InstallShield
installer in favor of Cygwin installer. Cygwin installation is much
easier to do now than it was in the early days and the the set of
binaries available is much larger. (It's so large that it is no
longer feasible to make something equivalent it by doing it all
in-house.)
[With Swarm 2.1, the packaging was an all-in-one development kit. This
was nice because it meant installation was very easy. However, it had
several significant disadvantages. One disadvantage (evidenced by
frustration of some users of Swarm) was that it was unclear how to
make it work with a `normal' installation of Cygwin. Another
disadvantage was the large amount of work it was to maintain a
Cygwin-like distribution completely independent of the Cygwin community.
Finally, the expense, clumsiness, buginess, and volatility of the
InstallShield application is something I am weary.]
The archive above includes GCC 3.0.1. Although GCC 3 will
probably show up in the Cygwin environment soon (Cygwin 1.3.3 is
expected real soon now), this compiler is modified in order to facilitate
special performance enhancements in Swarm, and to fix some bugs.
Several users have remarked that it would be nice to have a
minimalistic Java distribution. I think that would be a good thing to
have now that Swarm Java is pretty solid. To do that, I think it
would be best to rework the initialization code so that no Tcl/Tk
support files are needed. I haven't investigated that yet.
(Meanwhile, what you need is swarm.jar, javaswarm.dll, and the stuff
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