"Installing" SYN Tools, Tutorials, and Experiments

for COMPOSING SOFTWARE COMPONENTS (Springer, 2010)

• A Perl interpreter is required.
• GNUplot is required, in its "interactive" mode.
• Files have to be properly named, edited, copied, and (for code) executed outside of the tools in such a way that the tools find them as expected.

A great deal of help is available on the Internet to address the first two difficulties, which are not specific to SYN. The third difficulty is surprisingly difficult to address, and includes issues (particularly for Microsoft Windows) about connections between using a command-line system interface and a "point and click" one.

A "setup" module is provided to parametrize the SYN scripts for different platforms. The script ("setup.pm") has been made easy (?) to modify for new platforms. If the SYN tools refuse to run, "setup.pm" may require changes. It may be that your platform has a name different than the ones listed in "setup.pm"; you can discover that name and adjust accordingly. Here's the program you run to print out your platform name as seen by Perl:

#! /usr/bin/perl
print "$^O\n";

With one exception, the defaults chosen when the platform is not recognized may work properly (if not as efficiently as they might). The exception is a Microsoft Windows system whose name is not provided to Perl as "MSWin32". Unless "setup.pm" is given the correct name, a few commands (notably "splitsub") will fail. GNUPlot uses a "terminal type" that may be different for different platforms. Mostly this type does not have to be named, but if plotting fails, it may be necessary to supply it in "setup.pm".

Details for particular platforms:

Linux/UNIX
Apple Macintosh
Microsoft Windows.

The SYN tools have a version number that is printed on each invocation of the two primary scripts. It changes whenever a change is made to any script. In reporting bugs (to: hamlet@cs.pdx.edu ) it is helpful to mention the version.