[isabelle-dev] getting development version to work (was: newbie Q's getting for development version working on Windows and on Fedora 17.)

[Makarius]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2012, Christian Sternagel wrote:

> Dear Aaron,
>
> there is indeed a simple fix. There is a prebundled Isabelle component for 
> Java, which can be installed (together with all other required components) 
> via
>
>  isabelle components -a
>
> from a command line.

The missing bit of information for Aaron is that "command line" for 
Windows means a Cygwin terminal running bash.  Moreover, the Cygwin 
Mercurial is required, not the native Windows one.

I will update the official README_REPOSITORY shortly, to cover Windows as 
well.


> See also
>
> https://isabelle.in.tum.de/community/Working_with_the_repository_version_of_Isabelle

I still don't understand the purpose of this slightly divergent shadow 
version of some parts of README_REPOSITORY.  With the poor version control 
of Mediawiki, it is even unclear who wrote what when.


> Remark: Finding the right combination of packages (Poly/ML, Java, Scala, 
> ...) to make Isabelle run is delicate (some even call it an arcane 
> discipline ;)). That is why everything was bundled into Isabelle 
> components, which save the user a lot of work.

The user will get a selection of the components bundled, without dynamic 
download (same as in Isabelle2012).  People hooked on the repository (not 
users) get them via isabelle components as above, which is new since 
summer 2012.

If there is anything wrong with these components, please report here. 
They are intended to run everywhere.  JDK turns out a bit fat as universal 
component, and it will be stripped for final release, but not for 
repository use.


>>      Launch4j - "This application was configured to use bundled JRE but
>> the runtime is missing or corrupted."

The Isabelle.exe launcher is not covered by the dynamic component provider 
service of the Isabelle repository.  If you have Cygwin bash running, the 
toplevel "Isabelle" script will approximately do the same, or you use 
"isabelle jedit" directly, as most people who are used to command-line 
usage.


 	Makarius