ABS Tools

Inside this repository we develop the core tools of the ABS modelling language. The current language manual is at http://docs.abs-models.org.

To run the ABS collaboratory (a browser-based IDE for ABS) locally using Docker, execute the following command:

docker run -p 8080:80 --rm abslang/collaboratory:latest

Then connect your browser to http://localhost:8080/. It is not necessary to clone the repository or compile the toolchain to run the ABS collaboratory in this way.

Folders

• frontend - the ABS compiler and runtime support. See frontend/README for installation instructions. (short version: install jdk8, ant and erlang version 21, then run make frontend in this directory.)

• abs-docs - the ABS language manual, available online at http://docs.abs-models.org. To generate the manual locally, install maven, then run make manual.

  • abs-docs/ReferenceManual - an older LaTeX ABS reference manual, now mostly of historical interest

  • abs-docs/Ott - a formal grammar for a large subset of ABS, written in Ott

• emacs - Editor support for ABS.

• org.abs-models.releng - Files used by Jenkins and Buckminster for continuous integration at https://envisage.ifi.uio.no:8080/jenkins/.

• abs-packages - demonstration and description of how to use ABS packages (with Maven dependencies management)

• abs-unit - demonstration, description and initial ideas about the ABSUnit (a unit testing framework for ABS) (with Maven dependencies management)

• various leftovers from previous projects, to be evaluated and reactivated or pruned

  • maven-support - Maven plugin for generating Java/Maude from ABS, testing and packaging ABS codes

Using Vagrant

To develop the ABS tools without installing additional software, you can use Vagrant. Vagrant will start a Linux virtual machine and install the needed dependencies.

First, install Vagrant from https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html and VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org

To create the ABS virtual machine, run the command vagrant up in this directory. Run vagrant ssh to login to that machine (login vagrant/vagrant), or open http://localhost:8888/ to connect to a local version of the collaboratory. Currently supported browsers include Firefox, Chrome, recent IE (no Safari).

Within the VM, this directory is accessible as /vagrant.

Note for Windows Users

Please clone the archive without line ending conversion (unfortunately activated by default on Windows). Use -c core.autocrlf=false as argument for the initial git clone command, i.e.,

git clone https://github.com/abstools/abstools -c core.autocrlf=false

Otherwise, running the tools inside Vagrant or Docker will fail with obscure error messages.

Working with the repository

Consider rebasing instead of merging your changes:

git pull --rebase

This avoids spurious "merge branch to master" commits.

git pull --rebase will, in case both you and the remote repository have new commits, replay your local commits on top of upstream changes instead of adding a new local commit that merges the master and origin/master branches. Conflicts have to be resolved per patch (via git add + git rebase --continue) instead of in one go, but we get a cleaner history.