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Immediate C README


immediate C, iC rev 1.124

Copyright (C) 1985-2008, John E. Wulff
All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of either:

a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version,
OR

b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either the
GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this
Kit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, I'll be glad to provide one.

You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License,
my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no iC
source falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly put
said source under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, any
object code linked with iC does not automatically fall under the
terms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitions
of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the
resulting interpreter from executing any standard iC source. I
consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral
equivalent of defining subroutines in the iC language itself. You
may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide
or offer to provide the iC source, as specified by the GNU General
Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input
to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by compiling an
iC source that belongs to you with the iC compiler and linking it with
the iC runtime library, provided that you provide or offer to provide
the iC source as specified by the GPL. (The fact that the iC runtime
library and your code are in the same binary file is, in this case,
a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretation of the GPL.
If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding my intent,
feel free to contact me at <ic@je-wulff.de>.

Of course, the Artistic License spells all this out for your protection,
so you may prefer to use that.

Acknowledgements to Larry Wall, whose README I used as a template.
and for Perl - which is just GREAT.

Acknowledgements to Nick Ing-Simmons for Perl/Tk - which is SMOOTH.

Acknowledgements to Linus Torvalds and the Open-Software community
for Linux(R) - which is SOMETHING ELSE.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes for the installation of iC rev 1.124

1) Pre-requisites. You need the following on your system:

C compiler # tested with gcc, MSC and Borland
Perl, Perl/Tk and Time::HiRes # to build iC applications

1) Unpack the iC-archive in a suitable working directory with:

tar -xvzf icc_1.124.tgz
cd icc_1.124/src

2) Excute the following:

configure OR ./configure # if super user (depricated)
To make a Debug version do
makeAll -gcl OR makeAll -qgcl # to supress intermediate output
OR to make a Release version do
make OR make quiet # to supress intermediate output

this should build the files
immcc # the iC to C compiler
libict.a # the run-time library
without any errors

3) To compile and compare the test iC files in Test0 execute:

make test

4) To use the Perl support programs, it is mandatory that you install the
Perl packages Tk800.024 or later and Time::HiRes unless they are already
installed on your system. Both are included with this distribution.
This can be checked by executing the following at this point:

iClive -h

Skip to point 8) if you get a help output and no error message.
The last line tells you which version of Perl/Tk you are using.

5) Unpack build and install the Time::HiRes archive in a suitable
working directory with:

tar -xvzf Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz
cd Time-HiRes-01.20
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
su ### Password ###
make install
exit ### IMPORTANT ###
cd ..
rm -rf Time-HiRes-01.20 # unless you want to keep it

6) Perl/Tk is usually contained in Linux distributions and will
be installed automatically when the package is selected.
If not, unpack, build and install Tk-800.024.tar.gz (or later).
Follow the instructions in the README.xxx and INSTALL files.
For Cygwin under WinXP a special binary distribution of Tk800.023
is included, which works fine.

7) Return to the immediate C installtion

cd icc_1.124/src # or the correct iC src directory

8) To install the iC-compiler, library and scripts execute the
following as super user:

su ### Password ###
make install
exit ### IMPORTANT ###

this copies the essential executables to /usr/local/bin
it also copies the include file icg.h to /usr/local/include
libict.a to /usr/local/lib and Msg.pm to /usr/lib/perl5/site...

(make uninstall as su will remove all these files)

9) To build and run the very simple iC application "hello.ic" do

iClive hello.ic # starts the IDE with hell0.ic
press Build > Build executable # displays 'hello' successfully built
press Run # opens an iCbox with 1 button IX0.0
press button IX0.0 in iCbox # button turns HI (input is green)
# 'Hello! world' is output in the window iClive was started from
press Live
# The word IX0.0 (the only immediate variable in hello.ic)
# is coloured yellow/red, because IX0.0 is HI.
# When IX0.0 is pressed again to LO, the colour in the live
# display changes to green/black, indicating LO.
press File > Quit # 'hello' and iCbox are terminated

10) A slightly bigger application is "simple.ic". Build and run it with iClive.
An iCbox with 16 inputs and 8 outputs is started automatically.
Explore the logic of the statements by changing inputs and following
the outputs in iCbox and the live display in iClive.

11) The application "bar.ic" uses flip flops to produce a bar of running lights.
The application also explores the use of programmable time delays, giving
some idea of the scope of the iC language.

Running 'iClive bar.ic' as a separate process, while 'bar' is running,
will display the source listing (in the edit window), connects to iCServer
as an auxiliary client to receive updates of all variables from the running
iC program (bar). These updates will change the colours of all words,
which are immediate variables. (green/black = 0, yellow/red = 1)
This "live display" shows the current state of logical relationships in
visible statements of the iC program. Arithmetic variables are displayed
in a balloon, when the cursor rests on a variable.
(Arithmetic variables have a blue background).

In 'Live' mode, when a "live display" is shown, the text is read only.
When the 'Edit' button is pressed 'iClive' is a full featured editor.
The edit facilities of this program are described in the iClive man page
under the Heading 'KEYBOARD BINDINGS' (press Help button in 'iClive').

'iClive' can use the Tk::TextUndo package, an extension of Tk::Text. This
allows undoing changes with the Ctrl-u key. (Control-u is <<Undo>>)
This is achieved by starting iClive with the -u option. Use this option
only for editing. In 'Live' mode the display is very jerky with -u active.

12) Applications can of course be run without iClive. They do need iCserver
though, which is a hub server for the TCP/IP packets exchanged between
iC applications, I/O apllications (currently only iCbox) and optionally
iClive.

iCserver & # server runs on the background
iCbox IX0 & # start IX0 manually
hello # start application

ctrl-C # terminate application
iCstop iCserver # kill iCserver and iCbox

A better way is to start iCserver with the -a (auto-vivify) option,
which will start simulated I/O iCbox, every time an iC application
is started. Otherwise these must be started manually, which can be
tedious for larger applications.

iCserver -a & # auto-vivify iCbox for application
simple # iCbox with 3 sets of I/O starts

If iClive is started first, it does all this automatically. It then kills
iCserver automatically when it quits. When iCserver quits it kills all
registered applications and I/O's.

13) I have included a script called 'iCstop' from my private toolkit.
It can be used effectively to kill iCserver when it is executing
in the background, which is appropriate for a server.

iCserver &
.....
../iCstop iCserver # local copy of 'iCstop'

I have tried to use 'kill' with named processes as described in
the 'kill' manpage, but it does not seem to work, even called as
'command kill iCserver'.
You will have to install 'iCstop' manually in a PATH directory to
use it anywhere in your system. (see 'iCstop -h' for help)

14) To make executable applications from iC sources, use the script iCmake.
iCmake is a shell script to compile iC sources into C sources using the
'immcc' compiler. These in turn are compiled and linked into an
executable iC applications (currently using gcc - this can be changed).
Various options allow partial compilation and generation of listings.

iCmake -h OR iCman iCmake # gives a lot of help

15) The OpenOffice 2.2 document doc/iC.odt (or doc/iC.pdf, doc/iC.html)
is the handbook for the iC Programming Language. It opens the way to
use "immediate C" fully.

16) There is a generous help output for every tool in the 'iC Project'
initiated with the -h option. Each generated iC application also
has a help output:

hello -h # list available options

These options allow connecting to iCserver on another computer in a
LAN - or with a differnt port number. Very detailed debugging output,
showing the change of state of every event in the system is available
for the Debug version of the iC system. (Supressed for Release version)

17) There are 'man' pages for all the tools used in the 'iC Project'.
These can be viewed with the normal 'man' command under Linux or with
'iCman'. The man page viewer 'iCman' has some nifty web-browser
features to view and search man pages - try it with 'iCman iCman'.


Lots of success

John E. Wulff 2008.10.09 <ic@je-wulff.de>


I currently use SuSE Linux 9.3 with Tk800.024. I have tested the
distribution with Cygwin under WinXP and a special binary distribution
of Tk800.023 (in the kit). Perl under Windows Vista will not execute
forked processes, so the iC support programs don't work.

A test with Tk804.027 under MAC-OSX 1.3 and SuSE Linux 10.2 both work,
but live updates in iClive are noticably slow in both systems (about 10x).
Tag-handling in Tk::Text is much slower under Tk804.27 than under
Tk800.024 with Linux. Therefore I suggest staying with Tk800.024.

I have now switched to openSUSE 11.0, which brings along Tk804.28,
which provides fast live updates in iClive again. They seem to be as
fast as with Tk800.24. This was only judged by observation - at least
the performance is now subjectively good and I suggest you get Tk804.28.

A Test with Knoppix and Tk804.25, which is still available for Debian
also provided good performance with fast live updates in iClive.