Installation

Currently, you can only install from source. That is until we produce binaries for different plateforms.

Installation from source

First, you will need to download the Boost libraries since the project depends on it. The header files needed are already in the deps folder so you only need to compile dependencies that require separate compilation.

  1. Download Boost

First, you need to download the Boost libraries from boost.org. Extract the archive in a folder of your choice. For the purpose of this manual, we are using ~/Downloads:

~/Downloads$ tar --bzip2 -xf /path/to/boost_1_68_0.tar.bz2

Note

Make sure to use Boost 1.68 since it is the version against which developement is currently occuring. Also, development is occuring on a Linux system so please select the Unix variant of the libraries.

  1. Download Avalon

Now, download the Avalon source from github.com. Extract the archive and copy Avalon in the directory of your choice. Again, for the purpose of this tutorial, we are using ~/Downloads.

  1. Compile and install Boost into Avalon

To begin, configure Boost to install its compiled libraries in usr/local/lib and its header files in ~/Downloads/avaloniq-master/deps/boost by doing the following:

~/Downloads/boost_1_68_0$ ./bootstrap.sh --with-libraries=filesystem --libdir=/usr/local/lib --includedir=~/Downloads/avaloniq-master/deps/boost

Next we perform the compilation and library installation:

~/Downloads/boost_1_68_0$ sudo ./b2 install
  1. Compile Avalon

Compiling Avalon is very simple:

~/Downloads/avaloniq-master$ make clean && make
  1. Install Avalon

We perform a system-wide installation of Avalon so you can run the interpreter from any directory. To perform the installation, run:

~/Downloads/avaloniq-master$ sudo make install
  1. Set AVALON_HOME

The interpreter comes with an SDK that’s being updated. This SDK lives at /usr/lib/avalon-sdk. You need to set AVALON_HOME to point to that directory so the interpreter can find the SDK programs.

You can set AVALON_HOME directly for one session with the following:

$ export AVALON_HOME=/usr/lib/avalon-sdk

You can also edit ~/.bashrc and add the same line in it and have the SDK always accessible between sessions.

Running your program

The interpreter expects only the file that contains the function __main__.

To run your programs, invoke the interpreter from your terminal followed by your file with the main function and optional arguments separated by a space:

$ avaloni prog.avl arg_1 arg_2 arg_n