The Art of Computational Science README page: Installation Instructions

To install an ACS version on your computer, follow the instructions below. So far, we only have experience with installing ACS on Unix machines, where we depend on running a C shell. We hope to extend this choice at some point in the future (and we invite others to help us to port ACS to different platforms and environments).

• To start with, choose a tar ball corresponding to the latest ACS release. There are typically two versions, a full `acs' version and a smaller `acs-lite' version. For a discussion of the differences, see the description following our first release.

• Go to the directory where you want to install the ACS package. A typical choice would be just to go to your login directory "~name" if "name" is your login name. For this choice, just type "cd". Then copy your prefered tar ball to this place.

• Untar the tar ball, by typing "tar zxf acs-xxx.tgz" or "tar zxf acs-lite-xxx.tgz" where xxx is the version number of the tar ball you just copied in [note: this procedure is valid for ACS versions 1.2 or later]. After untarring has finished, if you type "ls" you will see that a new directory "acs" has been created. All ACS files live in the directory tree starting at this directory.

• Now give the environment variable name ACSROOT to this new directory. For example, if your chosen directory was "~name", the acs root directory will be called "~name/acs", and in that case you have to add the following line to your .cshrc file:
  

  setenv ACSROOT ~name/acs

  or whatever "~name/acs" expands to (perhaps "/home/name/acs").

• In addition, you should add the following line to your .cshrc file:

  source $ACSROOT/bin/acsstart.cshrc

  This will guarantee that your command search path will include the appropriate ACS files.

• Now type "make acscode". This command will install the proper code files into the library and source directories (Note that there are different ways to run the Ruby codes, either by using the standard "ruby some_code.rb" command, or by using our special "kali some_code" command -- see the discussion in the Code Management volume).

• In general, each code file "xxx.rb" can be found in the directory where its use is first mentioned. For example, "nbody_sh1.rb" can be found in directory "$ACSROOT/kali/vol/shared_timesteps", where the original file lives. A copy of it will be automatically installed in "$ACSROOT/kali/bin". It is this copy that is visible throughout the kali system, and that can be run using the command "kali", which is a shorthand for "ruby" which tells Ruby where to look for the appropriate source and library files.

  For example, the command: "kali nbody_sh1.rb ---help" should produce a short description of the code.

• If you have choosen an "acs-lite" tar file, none of the documentation, in terms of the dialogue volumes in html, ps or pdf form, will be present. You can generate all documentation files, in all three forms, by following these steps -- but note that this may take a rather long time, and that it requires the presence on your computer of various other packages, such as ImageMagick; if you don't have those, or if you don't want to wait for hours, you may want to download the full "acs" version instead, in which all volumes have already been compiled. The steps to compile the volumes from the "acs-lite" tar file are:
  • Type "cd $ACSROOT/src/rdoc*"

  • Become superuser, by typing "su", and as superuser, type "ruby install.rb"

  • Return to the $ACSROOT directory, by typing "cd $ACSROOT"

  • Type "make", which will construct the html, ps, and pdf versions of the manuscript.