XML CO538 Anonymous Questions and Answers Keyword Index

This page provides a keyword index to questions and answers. Clicking on a keyword will take you to a page containing all questions and answers for that keyword, grouped by year.

To submit a question, use the anonymous questions page. You may find the keyword index and/or top-level index useful for locating past questions and answers.

Keyword reference for windows

Question 131 (2004):

Can you recommend a good occam compiler which I can use on Windows as I am off site and would like to practice compiling occam ? I've looked on the web and all I can find is the KRoC unix versions.

Answer 131:

Well, you might like to try with the transterpreter version of occam. This has a free Windows version to download (and for the Apple MAC). It's a pretty full implementation of *classical* occam (i.e. the taught/examinable language). Missing for the moment is support for floating-point data types (REAL32/REAL64) and timeouts in ALT guards. Please note that this is an experimental system and work is very much 'in progress'!

Otherwise, the latest versions of KRoC/Linux work with cygwin on windows, see the answer to Question 56 (2004). Some information on the required cygwin packages can be found here.

Finally, there are probably some very old INMOS toolset compilers that work with DOS and Windows 3.1, but it's unlikely that these would be of much use to you.

Keywords: windows

Question 57 (2004):

As a follow up to my cygwin question, I have off site access to raptor, can I connect to that and run occam files through it?

Answer 57:

Of course! Once you're logged into raptor, just go from the command-line as usual. You'll probably not want to run anything X11 based over your home connection, though. I've got a 512 kbit ADSL line, and gvim is barely usable. However, command-line vim is just as good (slightly less fluffy), still syntax highlighted etc. Latency will be the main issue for doing stuff on raptor remotely.. Of course, you can edit your files at home then just upload to UKC. If you're on the VPN (which is free access I'm told) you can mount your raptor file-store as you normally would from a PPC.

Details on remote access to raptor, etc. can be found from the usual systems group pages.

Keywords: windows

Question 56 (2004):

Would it be possible to give a step by step guide as to how to set up Cygwin on an off campus PC running Windows so that it would be possible for us not to have to be at the uni to do our work ? I've tried to set it up, but there seem to be so many different things to download and extract that I just get lost!

Answer 56:

Possibly; I'll look into it, but no promises. It's essentially the same as setting it up on Linux, except that you need the cygwin versions of the various development packages (gcc, libc headers, binutils, etc.). I'm not a cygwin or windows user, even though I did produce the cygwin port. Only the very latest (pre-releases) of KRoC work with cygwin, so they're probably not entirely stable (but certainly stable enough for CO516 needs). The next major update will be a port of the new KRoC for raptor (the KRoC installed on raptor is quite old -- ~1995). A proper windows port is on the cards, but probably won't happen for another year or two yet (I have no desire to use Windows for anything, especially not software development..). A MacOS port is also on the cards, since that's just another UNIX port.

The first time I setup cygwin I had no knowledge of it, but combining the errors output from KRoC's build script with google searches and package searches on cygwin eventually got me to a working system.

Keywords: windows

Referrers: Question 131 (2004)

Question 14 (2003):

I've just followed the instructions for setting up Vim (v6.2) at home. As far as I know, I have done everything properly yet when I try compiling an occam file I get this error message:

    'kroc' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file

Do you know what the problem could be??

Thanks

(ps... I'm using MS Windoze XP if that helps)

Answer 14:

The KRoC occam system isn't available for windows. The kroc command (which you're seeing an error about), is the bit that compiles and links occam programs. We've tried a couple of times to make a version of KRoC for win32 (cygwin in particular), but there are still some outstanding problems. Added to which, UNIX is a much more suitable environment for programming.

You'll either have to use the KRoC installed on raptor, or find a Linux machine at home and install KRoC/Linux. To compile occam programs from a command-line on raptor, simply type:

    kroc file.occ

(replacing `file.occ' with the occam source file you want to compile). On KRoC/Linux, you need to explicitly add ``-lcourse'' if your occam program `#USE's' course.lib.:

    kroc file.occ -lcourse

It should even be possible (in theory) to create a setup where vim uploads the file to raptor, compiles it, then sends back the results. This would probably be tricky, however -- you'd need to get friendly with vim scripting and ssh/scp.

Keywords: vim , compiling , windows

Question 8 (2002):

OK so before I go and do the instructions to question 3, is that what I need to do to edit, compile and run occam files on a windows PC? (With access to the internet). Cheers

Answer 8:

Sorry - don't understand this question at all ... to what does your "that" refer ... and why are you looking at question 3 when the assignment is to do question 2 and you should have done question 1 in your classes?

Information on accessing raptor from your own PC is in the answer to Question 3 (2002). You can't compile or run occam on any Windows platform - but you can use eXceed or putty or ssh to access a mchine that can. Of course, if you have Linux on your PC, then you can install the KRoC system and do the work on your own machine.

Keywords: q3 , windows