Roll-your-own SOUL

The "How To" below gives you a step-by-step guide to installing VisualWorks Smalltalk on your system and loading SOUL and its libraries into a VisualWorks Smalltalk image.

Getting VisualWorks

  1. Download VisualWorks
    If you don't have VisualWorks installed on your system yet, get it for free from the Cincom VisualWorks downloads website. Several ways to download and install VisualWorks are available, but we recommend downloading the entire VisualWorks CD image. The CD image contains versions of VisualWorks for a number of platforms, including Apple MacOSX, Linux and Microsoft Windows.

  2. Install VisualWorks
    The VisualWorks Installation Guide provides the necessary information for installing VisualWorks: you should read the section "Installing from the Cincom Smalltalk CD-ROM".

Getting SOUL

  1. Make a Working Image
    The VisualWorks Installation Guide explains how to start the default VisualWorks Smalltalk image and tells you how to make a "working" copy of it: you should read the section "Starting VisualWorks the First Time". At the end of the section you will have made a copy of the default image, the copy is named "working" and can be safely used to try out SOUL for the first time.

  2. Connect to the DMP Store
    In the VisualWorks launcher window, open the Store menu and select the Connect to Repository... menu item. This will open a new window titled Connect to Database. Fill in the following details:

    Interface: PostgreSQLEXDIConnection
    Environment: soft.vub.ac.be:5432_dmpstore
    User Name: guest
    Password: guest
    Table Owner: BERN

    Click the Connect button.

  3. Load SOUL and its libraries
    In the VisualWorks launcher window, open the Store menu and select the Published Items menu item. This will open a new window titled Published Items. In the left pane list locate the bundle Soul and select it. In the right pane list select a version of Soul. Choose the one with the highest version number. In the File menu, select the Load menu item. This will start loading Soul. If you get a window asking about what versions to load for other dependencies, always select the latest version as well. 

The LiCoR and Cava library (for reasoning about Smalltalk and Java programs respectively) can be loaded in a similar way. Note that some libraries might depend on non-Smalltalk code (e.g., *.jar files). For instance, this is the case for the Barista suite of plugins for interacting with SOUL from within Eclipse. Please consult the individual installation instructions for those libraries (e.g., installation of Barista).