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Installation Instructions

GKB-Editor Installation Instructions


The GKB-Editor Version 2.6 is currently available for testing as a beta release.

System Requirements

  • A Sun SPARCstation (SPARC-2 or greater), running SunOS 4.1 or Solaris and X-Windows with at least 32MB of memory and approximately 10MB of available disk space (excluding any executable files)
  • Allegro Common Lisp 4.2 or greater, or Lucid Common Lisp 4.1 or greater (non-DBCS). We strongly recommend the use of Allegro Common Lisp because the CLIM implementation for Lucid Common Lisp is poor in our experience.
  • Allegro CLIM 2.0 or greater, or Lucid CLIM 1.1
  • One of the supported frame representation systems (FRSs): currently either Loom 2.1 or Ocelot. You can also use the GKB-Editor with the Sipe planner.
  • (Optional) If you wish to use the spreadsheet viewer, you will need the NExS spreadsheet software. The spreadsheet is available only under Solaris and with the GKB-Editor version 2.4 and higher.
Important note: If you are running with Allegro Common Lisp 4.2, a number of CLIM patches are required just to get the system running (and some others to make it work well). Please make sure you have obtained all the latest patches as of 10/1/95. If you are running with Allegro Common Lisp 4.3, patch 3500 and, for SunOS 4.x, patch 3501 is required. These patches can be retrieved directly from Franz Inc.'s ftp site.

We expect that in the future the GKB-Editor will run on additional platforms due to the high portability of Common Lisp and CLIM. We also expect to port the GKB-Editor to run on additional FRSs.

Obtaining the GKB-Editor

Click here to read the GKB-Editor license agreement and obtain the GKB-Editor from SRI.

Unpacking the Distribution

The downloaded file, gkb-editor.tar.Z can be unpacked as follows: (the tar files can be deleted after successful installation)

uncompress gkb-editor.tar
tar xvf gkb-editor.tar

This will create a directory aic-export containing a number of sub-directories.

Configuring the GKB-Editor

Once the files have been extracted from the distribution, you must configure the GKB-Editor to run on your system. Configuration is done by running a shell script named aic-install. Our examples assume that you are placing the root of the directory tree for the distribution (namely aic-export) in directory /usr/local/. You may wish to substitute a different location for the value of AIC.

To relativize the installation scripts to this directory, it is necessary to set the environment variable $AIC:

setenv AIC /usr/local/aic-export

The environment variable $AIC must be set to use any of the Makefile commands for unpacking, loading, or running an SRI system.

Run the installation shell script:

cd $AIC
aic-install

You will first be prompted for the name of a Unix directory; the script will create a file named aic-init.lisp in that directory; aic-init.lisp is used by all AIC systems to find the local aic-export directory tree. We recommend using one of the following directories:

  • /usr/share/local/lib
  • /usr/local/lib
  • /usr/local/etc
  • /etc
You may also place the file in the location $AIC, but you will have to reexecute aic-install every time a new aic-export is created. The directory name that you type should not end with a /. Next you will be prompted for the name of a file which is a Lisp executable image that contains CLIM (and possibly your FRS). The script will create a link in the aic-export directory tree to this file.

Configuring X Windows

The behavior of CLIM applications under the X windows system is dependent on the configuration of the window manager. For example, pop-up menus behave differently under different window manager resource settings. We find the configuration in file aic-export/library/released/clim/clim.Xdefaults useful for the olwm window manager. Therefore, we suggest that the following line be added to the file .openwin-init (or its equivalent) in the home directory of every user of the GKB-Editor:

toolwait  xrdb -merge aic-export/library/released/clim/clim.Xdefaults

If you are running Allegro Common Lisp with Motif, you may find it useful to assign emacs-like key bindings to your Motif text-field and text-editing gadgets. Franz, Inc. supplies a file of suggested bindings, dot-Xdefaults, in the lib/misc/ directory included with the ACL distribution. You may wish to edit your own .Xdefaults file (in your home directory) to include some or all of these bindings.

Installing the Spreadsheet

Once you have obtained and installed the NExS spreadsheet software, you will need to link the NExS library with the GKB-Editor library. The GKB-Editor library functions are distributed as compiled files for Solaris version 5.5 and are located in the directory $AIC/gkb-editor/released/lib.

Before linking the NExS library with the GKB-Editor library, you must ensure that the locations of the NExS library and the X11 library are on the LD_LIBRARY_PATH. For example, if the NExS library resides in the directory /usr/local/lib/NExS/lib and the X11 library in /opt/openwin/released/lib, you can add them to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH by typing

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib/NExS/bin:/opt/openwin/released/lib
at the unix prompt. Next go to the home directory for the GKB-Editor and link the two libraries by typing

cd $AIC/gkb-editor/released
make spreadsheet

at the unix prompt. If the linking is successful you should see the message Spreadsheet library successfully created . If due to some reason you need to recompile the GKB-Editor library, you may do so by typing the following

make compile-spreadsheet

at the unix prompt. Once the library has been created, you should add its location to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH by typing

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $LD_LIBRARY_PATH:$AIC/gkb-editor/released/lib
at the unix prompt. The library will be automatically loaded by the load procedure described next.

Loading and Running the GKB-Editor

Now you are ready to load and run the GKB-Editor system. Start up a Lisp image that includes CLOS and CLIM and the FRS of interest. If you running on a remote machine, you will need to set up your DISPLAY environment variable correctly, either from the shell, by typing

setenv DISPLAY local-host:0.0
(substituting your own local machine name for local-host), or from within Lisp, by typing

(sri:display-env "local-host:0.0")
to the Lisp listener.

Type the following to the Lisp listener, but substitute the location of the aic-export directory for $AIC. If you are using the GKB-Editor with Ocelot or Sipe, substitute :ocelot or :sipe for :loom.

(load "$AIC/gkb-editor/released/lisp/define-aic-root.lisp")
(sri:load-system 'gkb-editor :subsystem :loom)

The first time you load the GKB-Editor, you may wish to compile it. After loading the system using the commands above, execute the following:

(user:compile-gkb-editor)

To run the system, execute the following:

(user:run-gkb-editor)

AIC System Management

A number of other Lisp and Unix shell commands are supported for all AIC systems. The full list of these are documented in the file $AIC/doc/aic-sys-spec.txt. In addition, this file describes other conventions for managing AIC systems.

The GFP specifications are included with the distribution in $AIC/generic-fp/released/spec/paper.ps.


Links

Return to the GKB-Editor Overview page.

Go to the GKB User Manual.


Suzanne M. Paley <paley@ai.sri.com>
Last modified: Fri Dec 13 11:53:22 PST 1996