om@icsib29 (Stephen M. Omohundro) (06/14/91)
The first 0.01 beta release of the Sather programming language and environment are now available by anonymous ftp. This release includes the compiler, the debugger, the emacs editing environment, several hundred library classes, documentation, and some other miscellaneous tools. These programs are all freely available in source code form and are covered by an unrestrictive license which is included in the distribution. Sather is a new object-oriented computer language developed at the International Computer Science Institute. It is derived from Eiffel and attempts to retain much of that language's theoretical cleanliness and simplicity while achieving the efficiency of C++. It has clean and simple syntax, parameterized classes, object-oriented dispatch, multiple inheritance, strong typing, and garbage collection. The compiler generates efficient and portable C code which is easily integrated with existing code. A variety of development tools including a debugger and browser based on gdb and a GNU Emacs development environment have also been developed. There is also a class library with several hundred classes that implement a variety of basic data structures and numerical, geometric, connectionist, statistical, and graphical abstractions. We would like to encourage contributions to the library and hope to build a large collection of efficient, well-written, well-tested classes in a variety of areas of computer science. The compiler has been functional for almost a year now and the rest of the environment has been used to build several fairly large systems (eg. the compiler itself is written in Sather). Most components have only been tested on Sun 4's running SunOS 4.x but the generated C code is fairly portable and ports to other machines should not be difficult. The compressed tar file is about 3 megabytes, the unpacked system about 9.3 megabytes and the compiled and installed system about 18 megabytes. On a Sparcstation 2 the installation process takes about 30 minutes. In the United States, you may obtain the distribution by anonymous ftp on the internet from <icsi-ftp.berkeley.edu>. Use "ftp" as follows: % ftp icsi-ftp.berkeley.edu Connected to icsic.Berkeley.EDU. 220 icsi-ftp (icsic.berkeley.edu) FTP server (Version 5.60.l) ready. Name (icsi-ftp:username): ftp 331 Guest login ok, send ident as password. Password: 230 Guest login Ok, access restrictions apply. ftp> cd pub/sather 250 CWD command successful. ftp> binary 200 Type set to I. ftp> get sather-0.01.beta.tar.Z 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for sather-0.01.beta.tar.Z (3035453 bytes).226 Transfer complete. local: sather-0.01.beta.tar.Z remote: sather-0.01.beta.tar.Z 3556225 bytes received in 18 seconds (1.6e+02 Kbytes/s) ftp> quit 221 Goodbye. Uncompress and unpack using: % zcat sather-0.01.beta.tar.Z | tar xf - Each directory has a README file describing its contents. Installation instructions are in the file "INSTALL" in the "doc" directory. In Europe Sather is available from: gmdzi.gmd.de (currently: 129.26.1.90) in pub/Sather. We have started the mailing list "sather@icsi.berkeley.edu" for discussing Sather related issues. Messages sent to this address will be bundled into a digest which will be sent the list roughly daily. To be added to the list send a request to "sather-request@icsi.berkeley.edu". To submit bug reports and suggestions which should not go to the list use "sather-admin@icsi.berkely.edu". Stephen M. Omohundro International Computer Science Institute Telephone: 415-643-9153 1947 Center Street, Suite 600 Fax: 415-643-7684 Berkeley, CA 94704 Email: om@icsi.berkeley.edu -- -- Stephen M. Omohundro International Computer Science Institute Telephone: 415-643-9153 1947 Center Street, Suite 600 Fax: 415-643-7684 Berkeley, CA 94704 Email: om@icsi.berkeley.edu