INSTALL.aldor

Aldor (http://www.aldor.org) was originally invented to be the next
generation compiler for Axiom.

Since FriCAS is a fork of Axiom, Aldor programs can be run inside FriCAS.

The following criteria have to be met.

1. Aldor must be locally installed and the aldor executable must be
   available through the PATH environment variable.

2. The environment variable ALDORROOT must have been set and point
   to the installation directory of aldor. In particular the file
   $ALDORROOT/lib/libfoam.al must be available.

3. A number of Aldor source files must be available locally.
   They are
   https://svn.origo.ethz.ch/algebraist/trunk/aldor/lib/libax0/axiom.as
   https://svn.origo.ethz.ch/algebraist/trunk/aldor/lib/libax0/axextend.as
   https://svn.origo.ethz.ch/algebraist/trunk/aldor/lib/libax0/axlit.as
   https://svn.origo.ethz.ch/algebraist/trunk/aldor/lib/libax0/stub.as
   https://svn.origo.ethz.ch/algebraist/trunk/aldor/lib/libax0/minimach.as
   https://svn.origo.ethz.ch/algebraist/trunk/aldor/lib/axllib/src/lang.as

(1) and (2) are absolutely necessary.

If you have svn, curl or wget locally on your computer and you have
internet access at the time you type "make", then the build system
automatically takes care of downloading the above sources.

If you don't have svn or wget or internet access at build time, the build
will fail by telling you that you need one of the files above.
You can then simply download those files with an ordinary web browser and
put them into the build directory.

Suggestion for building the aldor interface:

1. Install aldor from aldor.org. Either build your own aldor from the
   latest svn sources (only for experts) or download the appropriate
   binary from http://www.aldor.org/downl.html.

2. Set ALDORROOT to point to the installation directory.
   In BASH: export ALDORROOT=/path/to/install/dir

3. Add the aldor executable to your PATH
   in BASH: PATH=$ALDORROOT/bin:$PATH

4. Configure a VPATH (or out-of-source) build of FriCAS.

   cd /path/to/builddir
   /path/to/fricas-src/configure --prefix=/path/to/installdir --enable-aldor

5. If you had (or expect) problmes due to missing files, get the files
   listed above and put them under /path/to/builddir/src/aldor.

6. Start the build.

   cd /path/to/builddir
   make

7. If "make" finished successfully then type "make install". Then
   FriCAS and the interface is installed.
   In case the build failed because of missing one of the above files,
   clean the aldor subdirectory:

   cd /path/to/builddir/src/aldor && make clean

   and go back to 5.


If something does still not work, ask at fricas-devel@googlegroups.com.

In order to test if everything went OK, try to compile the following
file from within FriCAS by starting fricas and entering

  )co fib.as
  fib 5

on the fricas command line.



---BEGIN fib.as
#include "axiom"
fib(n: Integer): Integer == {
        n < 0 => 0;
	n < 3 => 1;
	fib(n-1) + fib(n-2);
}
---END fib.as

Note that this program is by design inefficient, because it recomputes
values again and again.