Unix Installation (MIT/GNU Scheme Pucked User Manual)

B.2 Unix Installation

MIT/GNU Scheme Pucked can be built and installed on a wide variety of Unix-like operating systems using a “binary distribution” and developer tools like those in the GNU tool chain: a bourne-like shell, a make command, a C compiler and linker, and a “curses” library. For example, here are the packages that must be installed on some popular systems:

Debian-like systems: gcc make libncurses-dev
CentOS-like systems: gcc make ncurses-devel
macOS systems: Command line developer tools ‘xcode-select --install’

The Scheme interpreter is built from C code and installed much like any other GNU C program. The binary files in the distribution contain pre-compiled Scheme code. This code cannot be compiled during the install because there is no Scheme compiler to do the work until after the install.

First download the appropriate binary distribution. To do this you will need to know the name of your Scheme architecture. If your computer has an older Intel IA-32 (32 bit) CPU, your architecture is named i386. If it has a newer Intel64 CPU (64 bit, e.g. a Core or an i3 or i5 or i7), it is named x86-64. The binary archives contain machine instructions for one of these.

Click on the name of your Scheme machine architecture in the list of binaries for the core system. Save the file, which should be named something like mit-scheme-pucked-10.1.20-x86-64.tar.gz.

Compile the Scheme interpreter using the following steps:

Unpack the archive to create your build directory, e.g. mit-scheme-pucked-10.1.20. For example,
```
tar xzf mit-scheme-pucked-10.1.20-x86-64.tar.gz
```
will create a new directory mit-scheme-pucked-10.1.20.
Move into the src subdirectory of the new directory:
```
cd mit-scheme-pucked-10.1.20/src
```
Configure the software:
```
./configure
```
By default, the software will be installed in /usr/local, in the subdirectories bin and lib. If you want it installed somewhere else, for example /opt/mit-scheme, pass the --prefix option to the configure script, as in ./configure --prefix=/opt/mit-scheme.

The configure script accepts all of the normal arguments for such scripts, and additionally accepts some that are specific to MIT/GNU Scheme. To see the possible arguments and their meanings, run the command ./configure --help.
Build the software:
```
make
```
Install the software:
```
make install
```
Depending on configuration options and file-system permissions, you may need super-user privileges to do the installation steps.
Build the documentation:
```
cd ../doc
./configure
make
```
Install the documentation:
```
make install-info install-html install-pdf
```
Depending on configuration options and file-system permissions, you may need super-user privileges to do the installation step.

Plugins

The project home page lists the available plugins with short descriptions to help you choose from among them. Click on the source archive link for each plugin you would like to use. Also download the source for any plugins your desired plugins require. You will need to build and install each required plugin before the plugins that require it.

If you are looking for the same functionality you found in MIT/GNU Scheme you will want all of the plugins listed in the “Standard Plugins” section of the home page. Your desired plugins are: blowfish, edwin, gdbm, imail, mcrypt, x11, and x11-screen.

The plugins are not distributed in binary form (except as Ubuntu packages). With the core Scheme system installed, their Scheme code can be compiled along with their C code. See the README file in each plugin’s source distribution for more information.