README

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Overview:

The software contained herein is an implementation of a byte-code
interpreter and compiler for an actor language called Rosette.  By
actor we mean what is described in Gul Agha's dissertation: "Actors"
(MIT Press 1986).  Rosette significantly extends the basic language
model presented by Agha to make it more friendly.

This software should be of value to those who are interested in
experimenting with concurrent object-oriented languages based on the
actor semantics.

The system includes a fairly well developed set of facilities implemented
in the Rosette language, including: a macro facility; printing system (that
could use a pretty printer); a pleasant interface to C language data
structures and foreign functions; convenient interfaces to Unix socket
facilities and other system calls such as execvp; a rich set of
"builtin" types: tuples, strings, queues, stacks, and so forth
together with a variety of more or less useful primitives such as:
regexpCompare, string-split, and string-join on strings; reflective
facilities; a prototype-based inheritance system; a nascent
multi-method facility; a distributed blackboarding type system similar
in some respects to Linda tuple spaces; and a lot of other things too
numerous to mention.

The documentation is really in rather poor shape but there is a
"reference" report in the 'docs' directory.

The system runs (for us anyway) on sun3 and sun4 under sunos4,
HP700/800s, Silicon Graphics MIPS/IRIX, and DEC 5100.  It has worked
in the past on 386/486 platforms running ATT System V rel 4, but you
will certainly have to fiddle with it to get that to work.

Directories:

The 'bin' directory initially contains a bunch of shell scripts that
control the make process and so forth.  It will contain the binaries
for rosette, rosh, and ess.

The 'defs' directory contains a few make variables for each platform
type that is supported.  In principal it would be nice if this were
the only set of make files that had to be modified in order to set
things up to build.

The 'deocs' directory contains the PostScript for the (somewhat
incomplete and a little out-of-date) Rosette reference report.

The 'h' directory contains the various includes for the system.  There
is a sub-directory 'sys' that contains platform specific definitions.

The 'include/mk' and 'defs' directories contain the makefile pieces
that build and install (see below) the software.  These makefile
pieces are processable so far as we know only by gnu make 3.62 or
higher - certainly not by mere make or bsd pmake.

The 'isode' directory provides some modified components that are
needed to interface the isode 7.0 (or later) osi development system to
the "ess".  If you know what isode is and are facile with working with
it you can probably deal with this directory.  There is a single gnu
make variable that you have to fiddle with to get isode included into
the "ess" after you have the requisite library (see below).

The 'man' directory contains man pages for rosette, rosh, and ess.

The 'rbl' directory contains all of the system software that is
written in the Rosette (Base) Language.  Things are factored into
three basic levels of functionality: "rosette", "rosh", and "ess".
The "rosette" level is sort of the basic core of things without a lot
of system interfaces and no communications support.  The "rosh"
configuration adds in access to a lot of the chapter 2 system calls.
The "ess" adds in a variety of communication facilties.  These are not
documented and you will just have to puruse the code.

The 'src' directory contains the C++ implementation.  We use a variety
of C++ compilers depending on the platform and so forth.  On a good
day you should be able to use gcc 2.2.2 (maybe higher).


Installation:

There are two environment variables that you need to be aware of:

	1) ESS_SYSDIR - controls where various things are installed
	   and where the make file directories are expected to be

	2) IsodeInterface - if defined causes the ess to include
	   the ISODE interface.  This permits upper layer OSI
	   operation of the ess.

You will need GNU make 3.62 or greater (earlier may work?).

You will need at least cpmake and carch to be available in your search
path.  Either put ${ESS_SYSDIR}/bin in the path or copy these two
scripts to some place that is in the path.

The compilers that are used on the various platforms are:

	Sun3/4 - Sun's CC2.1

	Dec5100 - gcc 2.2.2 or higher

	Silicon Graphics - their own C++ product

	HP700/800 - HP's C++

at various times we have used gcc on the platforms other than Dec and
with appropriate modifications of the $(ARCH)-src.defs file in the
$(ESS_SYSDIR)/include/mk directory gcc should work on any of the
platforms.

After setup of the environment you should be able to incant:

	cpmake all install

this will build rosette, rosh, and ess.  There is a program 'console'
that is used to isolate an ess from various wacky things that we have
observed with the 'wall' program.   Part of the process involves
linking console to rosette, rosh and ess.  The actual code for each is
in the corresponding *.image which is exec'd from the console.

You should be aware that there are some aspects of the overall process
that will seem strange.  This is perhaps due to the fact that rosette
is actually a sub-system of a much larger technology suite.


Complaint Department:

tomlic@mcc.com