Installation
kForth is provided under the terms of the
GNU General Public License.
New releases of this software will be posted at the
CCRE website,
as they become available. Online documentation is also available
at the website. Difficulties with installation should be reported to:
krishna.myneni@ccreweb.org
The kForth source package is distributed as compressed tar (Unix Tape
Archive) files:
where x.y.z is a version number such as 1.2.6.
The source package unpacks to a directory of source files and a
Makefile for building the executable(s). Windows users may
also simply download the file
kforth-pcwindows-x.y.z.zip if they only want to run kForth without
building it from its source code.
Installation under Linux
The GNU C/C++ development packages (version 3.2 or later)
are required to be installed on your system:
gcc
gcc-c++
glibc
glibc-devel
libstdc++-devel
make
These packages are typically installed by default for a
Linux workstation configuration, but if they are not, you may
install them manually from your Linux distribution.
In addition, the following packages are also required:
readline
readline-devel
ncurses
ncurses-devel
On your Linux system, you may verify that these packages
have been installed using the rpm command in the following
way:
rpm -q package
The above command will return the version number of the package
if it has been installed.
Assuming your Linux system has the required packages, follow these
steps to unpack, build, and install kForth:
- Create a directory for the kForth source files, typically
in your home directory, e.g.
mkdir ~/kforth
- Move the kForth archive file into this directory:
mv kforth-pclinux-x.y.z.tar.gz ~/kforth
- Change to the ~/kforth directory and extract the files:
cd ~/kforth
tar -zxvf kforth-pclinux-x.y.z.tar.gz
After this step, a subdirectory will be created with the
name kforth-x.y.z. This directory will contain all of
the kForth source files, the Makefile(s), as well as
a README file with these same instructions.
- Change to the kforth-x.y.z directory:
cd kforth-x.y.z
- Build the kForth executable. There are several options for
building kForth, but the simplest is to type:
make
All of the source files will be compiled/assembled and two
executable files, named "kforth" and "kforth-fast",
will be generated.
- At this point you should be able to run the executables from
your ~/kforth/kforth-x.y.z directory. If you wish to make
kforth available to all users or to place the programs in the
default search path, move the executables to a suitable directory.
Typically you must have root access to do this. Login as
root or superuser:
su
Next, move the executables to an appropriate directory
(/usr/local/bin/ is recommended):
mv kforth /usr/local/bin/
mv kforth-fast /usr/local/bin/
Any user should then be able to execute kforth or kforth-fast.
Return to normal user mode (exit from superuser mode).
- Sample source code files are included in the archive. These
files have extension
.4th
. Users may copy the
example programs to their own directories.
- You may specify a default directory in which kforth
will search for .4th files not found in the current
directory. The environment variable
KFORTH_DIR
must
be set to this directory. For example, under the BASH
shell, if you want the default directory to be
~/kforth/kforth-x.y.z
, add the following lines
to your .bash_profile file:
KFORTH_DIR=~/kforth/kforth-x.y.z
export KFORTH_DIR
- The file kforth.xpm may be used to create a desktop icon
for kForth under X Windows. For example, if you are using
the KDE environment, copy kforth.xpm to the
/usr/share/icons directory.
Installation under Windows
Windows users may choose to install the binary distribution file only,
or to build the kForth executables from source code. Instructions for
both options are given below. Windows users should also note that
kForth programs (text files having the extension .4th) must
be stored in Unix text format rather than DOS text format.
Many capable third-party text editors for Windows provide the option
of saving text files in Unix text format. The Notepad editor does not
have this option. However, one may use the WordPad program
bundled with Windows to view and save text files in Unix text
format.
Installing the kForth Binary Distribution for Windows
Follow these steps to install and use the binary distribution:
- Users of Windows 95, Windows ME, and Windows 98/SE have reported
that kForth versions greater than 1.0.12 do not start properly
from the Windows Command Prompt (also called the MS-DOS Prompt)
under these systems. We strongly recommend that you use the Cygwin
BASH shell to run kForth under these versions of Windows. This
requires a minimal installation of Cygwin on
your Windows system. From the
Cygwin Home Page, click on the Install icon, which will
download the Cygwin setup.exe program to your PC. Then run
the setup.exe program. For a minimal installation,
choose the Base + Default packages, when asked to select
the packages. At the end of the installation, you will be prompted
to create an icon for the Cygwin BASH shell on your desktop.
Selecting this option will give you an icon on your Windows Desktop
with which you can start the BASH command prompt window. Note
that BASH provides Unix commands
(cd pwd ls cp mv rm mkdir ...).
- Start the BASH shell. This will open the command prompt window,
with the present directory set to /cygwin/home/username/,
where username is your Windows user name.
- Make a directory for kForth:
mkdir kforth
- Download the distribution file
kforth-pcwindows-x.y.z.zip and unzip the contents into the kForth directory.
The zip file contains the executables kforth.exe and
kforth-fast.exe, the required dynamic link libraries
cygwin1.dll, cygncursesx.dll,
cygreadlinex.dll, and sample kForth programs.
- Execute kForth by typing ./kforth from within the kForth
directory, using the BASH command window. To exit from kForth,
type bye. To close the BASH command window, type
exit from the BASH command prompt.
Building kForth From the Source Distribution for Windows
The Cygwin development tools must be
installed on your Windows system in order to rebuild the executables
starting from the source code. Follow these steps to build kForth
from its source files on your Windows system:
- Install Cygwin on
your system. Be sure to select the Development
packages.
- Start the Cygwin BASH shell.
- Create a directory for the kForth source files, typically
in the
/usr/local/src
directory, e.g.
mkdir /usr/local/src/kforth
- Move the kForth archive file
kforth-pcwindows-x.y.z.tar.gz
into this directory:
mv kforth-pcwindows-x.y.z.tar.gz /usr/local/src/kforth
- Change to the
/usr/local/src/kforth
directory
and extract the files:
cd /usr/local/src/kforth
tar -zxvf kforth-pcwindows-x.y.z.tar.gz
After this step, a new directory called kforth-x.y.z will
be created. This directory and its subdirectories contain all of the kforth
source files, the Makefile
(s), and a README
file containing these instructions. Change to the source directory:
cd kforth-x.y.z
- Build the kForth executable. There are several options for
building kForth, but the simplest is to type:
make
All of the source files will be compiled/assembled and the
executable files, named kforth.exe
and
kforth-fast.exe
, will be generated.
- Move the executables to the desired directory, typically
into /usr/local/bin if you want to run them from
any location within the bash shell.
- Sample source code files, with the extension
.4th
,
are included in the archive file. These files are inteded to
serve as programming examples for kForth.
- If you will be running kForth from the Cygwin BASH shell,
you may specify a default directory in which kForth
will search for .4th files not found in the current
directory. The environment variable KFORTH_DIR must be set
to this directory. For example, under the BASH
shell, if you want the default directory to be
/usr/local/src/kforth
, add the following
lines to your .bash_profile
file:
KFORTH_DIR=/usr/local/src/kforth
export KFORTH_DIR
- The file
kforth.ico
may be used to create a
desktop icon for kforth under Windows.
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