Re: [Swarm-Support] MacOS X Binaries Update

[Darren Schreiber]

Below is my draft of text for the Readme.  I know that I fall in the middle of the distribution of geekdom here and that I will have students who know very little about computers, but want to use Swarm.  In anticipation, I wrote the following and would appreciate corrections, addendums, etc.  Perhaps this could be added to whatever is decided as the official readme for Swarm's OS X implementation?  I tried to paraphrase out of the FAQs for Unix packages.  But, I figure that many people would like some idea of what they are installing and why.

I think that this is the order that the packages should be installed/updated in.  Any corrections are welcome.

Also, how do I set the environment variables in OS X?  Bill suggests this, but I don't have an idea of how to do it.

Finally, I note that the README in the BLT package is incorrect or unclear.

Thanks for all the hard work that has gone into this port.  I will try to do my part as a user.

Darren


Jaguar Macintosh OS X 10.2.4 – Mac OS X has a core of Free BSD, a version of Unix, thus allowing Unix software to run with a user-friendly graphic interface.  Version 10.2 of Mac OS X is known as Jaguar and contains over one hundred improvements to prior versions.  Version 10.2.4 was released on 2/13/03.  You can get this update by clicking on the upper left Apple icon, selecting System Preferences and then clicking Software Update. 

X11 – This implementation of the X11 graphic user interface allows you to use a lot of Unix software that has been ported to Mac OS X.  It is currently in Public Beta version 0.2.1 and can be found at http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/download/index.html.  I have found substantial speed improvements in X11 over OroborOSX.

X11 SDK – The software development kit (SDK) allows you to compile applications for X11 and is required if you want to develop software in Swarm  (right??).

Tcl – Stands for Tool Command Language and is language and library package that can be embedded in application programs.  You can make calls to TCL from applications and thus avoid re-implementing its features.  Swarm uses this to … (I’m not sure??)

Tk – The tk toolkit is a Tcl extension that provides a Tcl interface to the X Window System.  It is an easy way to build a graphical interface to an application.  Swarm uses Tk for the graphical user interface.

BLT – This is a library of Tcl and tk extensions with tools for charts, graphs, and other useful widgets.  Swarm uses BLT to provide the dynamic graphs of data generated in the simulations.

Gcc – The GNU C compiler is used to convert the written code into instructions the computer can execute.  After you write programs in Swarm, you then compile them so they can be run like regular software.

Gsed  -- Gsed is the GNU Stream EDitor.  This is a non-interactive text editor which means that unlike Word or Wordperfect, the user sends a command to gsed which it then implements.  Gsed is used in Swarm for …

Swarm -- This is the set of tools that your individual agent-based model will call upon.  

On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 11:55  AM, Darren Schreiber wrote:

> I am excited to try this later today.  Is there an order that I need to install the packages in?  Would you mind just a little bit more explicit instructions in the README on the Savanna site?  Also, is there uninstall ability or any required files (other items for the readme)?
>
> Darren
>
>
> On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 04:00  AM, Bill Northcott wrote:
>
> > An updated version of the Swarm libraries has been made available on the
> > Savannah site.
> >
> > This update fixes an unintended dependency on libdl in yesterday's package
> > and adds support for png.
> > The png support is statically linked.  So libpng is NOT required to use
> > it.
> >
> > Enjoy
> > Bill Northcott
> > _______________________________________________
> > Support mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > http://www.swarm.org/mailman/listinfo/support
>
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