<html><!-- $Id$ --><head><title>The Isabelle System Distribution</title></head><body><h1>The Isabelle System Distribution</h1><h2>Version information</h2>This is <strong>Isabelle-94 revision 8</strong> as of May1997. Basically, it should be backwards compatible to earlierIsabelle-94 releases. Older versions (like Isabelle-93) are quitedifferent, though. See also the <tt>NEWS</tt> file in the distributionfor a more detailed list of new features and changes.<h2>System requirements</h2>Isabelle requires a real Unix box with sufficient resources. Funstarts at about 32MB of memory (somewhat depending on your ML system),several tens of MB disk space and with a relatively fast CPU.<p>Furthermore, it needs the following software, which is not part of thedistribution:<ul><li> A full Standard ML Compiler (e.g. Poly/ML or SML of New Jersey).<li> The GNU bash shell (version 1.x or 2.x).<li> Perl 5.x - the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.</ul><p>The following ML system and platform combinations are known to workquite well:<ul><li> Poly/ML versions 2.x and 3.1 on Suns.<li> SML/NJ 0.93 on Suns and SGIs. There seem to be severalproblems with Linux and HP-UX.<li> SML/NJ 1.09.27 or later on Suns, Linux, etc.</ul><p><a href="http://www.ahl.co.uk/poly-ml.html">Poly/ML</a> is acommercial product and costs money, but it is stable and efficient. Itrequires relatively little memory (starting at about 16MB) and diskspace (about 40MB for all distributed object logics).<p>SML/NJ needs lots of store and disk space, but it is <ahref="http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/what/smlnj/software.html">free</a>.The last official release is 0.93. Recent working versions may bebetter suited, under normal circumstances. Beware of the manyincompatibilities among SML/NJ versions! From the 1.09.x family, wenow only support 1.09.27, or later. An unofficial pre-built binarydistribution of at least SML/NJ 1.09.27 for Linux is also <ahref="http://www4.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~wenzelm/resources.html">available.</a>If you have to re-build SML/NJ 1.09.x yourself from the sources, justcomment out all targets except "sml" (cf. the installationinstructions of the SML/NJ distribution).<h2>Installation</h2>See file <tt>INSTALL</tt> in the Isabelle sources on how to build thesystem. Further background information may be found in the<em>Isabelle System Manual</em>, distributed as <tt>dvi</tt> with thesources.<h2>Interfaces</h2>The distribution includes only a very primitive interface based onordinary terminal sessions.<p>David Aspinall has written a more elaborate <ahref="ftp://ftp.dcs.ed.ac.uk/pub/da/Isamode.tar.gz">user interface</a>for Isabelle. It runs under recent versions of GNU Emacs and XEmacs,the latter being recommended. It's useful to both novices andexperts.<h2>Other sources of information</h2><h3>Mailing list</h3>The electronic mailing list <tt>isabelle-users@cl.cam.ac.uk</tt>provides a forum for Isabelle users to discuss problems and exchangeinformation. To join, send a message to<tt>isabelle-users-request@cl.cam.ac.uk</tt>.<h3>Personal mail</h3><a href="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/lcp/">Lawrence C Paulson</a><br>Computer Laboratory<br>University of Cambridge<br>Pembroke Street<br>Cambridge CB2 3QG<br>England<br><br>E-mail: lcp@cl.cam.ac.uk<br>Phone: +44-223-334600<br>Fax: +44-223-334748<br><p>or<p><a href="http://www4.informatik.tu-muenchen.de:80/~nipkow/">Tobias Nipkow</a><br>Institut fuer Informatik<br>T. U. Muenchen<br> D-80290 Muenchen<br>Germany<br><br>E-mail: nipkow@informatik.tu-muenchen.de<br>Phone: +49-89-289-22690<br>Fax: +49-89-289-28183<br><p><hr>Please report any problems you encounter. While we shall try to behelpful, we can accept no responsibility for the deficiences ofIsabelle and their consequences.<hr></body></html>