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 M2 - Windows installation

Last updated: 2007-09-24

What you will need

These screen shots are from an installation of M2 under Microsoft Windows 98 on a Celeron 400 MHz PC with 64 MB of RAM. You will need to download these packages:

• Cygwin
  Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. Once this package is installed, you will have a complete development system: an high quality compiler for C, C++, Pascal, Java and other languages; all the development utilities like make, gdb, and so on. I installed Cygwin 1.5.13-1 taken from its original site www.cygwin.com. Select the link "Install Cygwin now": this will download the installer.

• Conservative Garbage Collector
  This memory manager and garbage collector is not mandatory, but recommended for large programs. It can be installed also later, if required: in this case, the configuration script "configure" must be re-run in order to update the configuration of M2. I installed GC 6.4 taken from the site of the author: www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/.

• M2 Compiler and Libraries
  This is the compiler and the libraries of M2 and my be downloaded here: www.icosaedro.it/m2/download.html.

Installing Cygwin

M2 and the GC both needs a development system, including a C compiler, the "make" command, a text editor and a shell intepreter. All these tools are provided by Cygwin.

Start the setup program and choose a directory where to install, like C:\cygwin. Next, select the installation from the network, and choose the packages you want. Ensure that gcc-core and make be included. If you forgot something, run the setup once more and add the missing packages. If you need more help, here is the user guide of Cygwin: cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/cygwin-ug-net.html.

Now copy the files of GC and M2 inside the home directory of the user admin, located in C:\cygwin\home\admin.

Now you are ready to start Cygwin: double click on the icon Cygwin created on the desktop by the setup program. Ensure all the files of GC and M2 are there giving the command ls -l:

Installing GC

If you choose to install the GC, give these commands inside the terminal of Cygwin:

$ tar xvzf gc*
$ cd gc6.6
$ ./configure
$ make
$ make install

The GC can be installed also later if required. In this case the script "configure" of M2 (see below) must be re-run.

Installing M2

Give these commands inside the terminal of Cygwin:

$ cd
$ tar xvzf m2*
$ mv m2-1.1-20050315 m2
$ cd m2
$ ./configure
$ make

Fine tuning

It's very convenient the command m2 be available from whatever directory you are in. This may be accomplished adding the path of the script m2 to the variable PATH in the file .bash_profile. Moreover, we need to define were the M2 system is installed defining the envar M2_BASE. To this aim, give these commands inside the terminal:

$ cd
$ echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/m2/bin'  >>  .bash_profile
$ echo 'export M2_BASE=$HOME/m2'  >>  .bash_profile

Now close the terminal giving the command exit and start a new one. We are ready to progam in M2.

Your first program

Use whatever text editor you prefer. Mine is vim, but you can use Notepad or other more advanced text editors. Here is the source of your first program:

Save this text into the file C:\cygwin\home\admin\hello.mod. Please note that the name extension of the file is "mod", not "txt". Return to the terminal to compile and execute the program with the command:

$ m2 hello.mod -r

Here is what will appear into the screen:

(The strange .tar.tar extension that appears in the figure above is an artifact produced by Internet Explorer for some obscure reason while saving the .tar.gz package just downloaded. You can rename the file if you want, anyhow that do not cares to the tar command.)

Note that hello.mod is the source, and hello.exe is the executable file. You may run the program as many times you want giving the command ./hello.exe.

How to continue

To lear more about the Cygwin, read the user guide: cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/cygwin-ug-net.html.

Now you are ready to write more interesting programs. See the Reference of the language for a complete survey of its capabilities. This WEB site provide also a gallery of symple applications. Happy programming with M2!

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