*********************************************************************** CONTENTS *********************************************************************** 1. Introduction 2. Installing a Binary Distribution 3. Running the Foundry 4. Manifest 5. Where to go for Help/Bug Reports -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a v1.0 or later release of the ActorFoundry, a Java-based programming environment for building actor systems. ActorFoundry is structured as a set of interfaces which describe the behavior of key components of the system. A pure-Java implementation is provided for each such component. Thus, the foundry is "portable" in the sense that a fully functional pure-Java implementation exists. Currently, the foundry is distributed as a pre-compiled binary distributions. The pre-compiled binary distributions include a foundry-xxx.jar file, which contains all the class files necessary to run the foundry, and several example programs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Installing a Binary Distribution -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pre-requisites: JDK 6, Ant 1.7 The pre-compiled binary distribution contains only those files necessary to run the foundry. If you are planning on tinkering with foundry internals then you should install the raw source distribution. We plan to make the source available soon. Please contact one of us to have a peek at the source. Installing the binary distribution is simply a matter of figuring out where to put it. Here's an example session (assuming foundry distribution is unpacked in /tmp): > cd /tmp/foundry-local-1.0 > ant If you encounter any errors here, please try including tools.jar from $JAVA_HOME/lib into the classpath in build.xml. See section 3 below for instructions on how to run the foundry. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Configuring and Running the Foundry -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Running foundry is just a matter of launching Java VM and providing information about foundry run-time. So on Linux/Unix/Mac, one would run the following command: > java -cp lib/foundry-1.0.jar:classes osl.foundry.FoundryStart osl.examples.helloworld.HelloActor hello The last command loads the foundry run-time, creates the HelloWorld actor and sends the hello message to it. Note: The last command uses Unix/Linux syntax for specifying classpath. On Windows, the colon before 'classes' is replaced by a semi-colon. Alternatively one can use the following command to view the usage: > java -cp lib/foundry-1.0.jar:classes osl.foundry.FoundryStart An important switch is "-open" which keeps the ActorFoundry run-time alive after processing the initial actor/message. This is useful for running gui applications and for multi-node actors. There are a bunch of example actor programs in osl.examples.* to play with. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Manifest -------------------------------------------------------------------------- For the pre-compiled binary distribution: README You're looking at it. LICENSE A description of the license restrictions governing the ActorFoundry. LICENSE-Kilim A description of the license restrictions governing the Kilim code that we use internally. foundry.conf A sample configuration file for the foundry. lib/ Jar files used for building and some for running actor programs. This includes foundry-xxx.jar which contains the foundry run-time. src/ Contains a bunch of examples programs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Where to go for Help/Bug Reports -------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you need help, want to report a bug, or have suggestions on how the foundry may be improved, check out the foundry web page at: http://osl.cs.uiuc.edu/af It contains news on the latest release and pointers to applications written in the foundry. You can also e-mail the current maintainers of the foundry: Rajesh Karmani Amin Shali