Getting started with FLEX:
Runtime installation

The FLEX compiler emits code which must be linked against a Java runtime environment and JNI implementation in order to make a complete executable. The FLEX "Runtime" module provides these things. To check it out, assuming you've already checked out the "Code" module into ~/Harpoon/Code:

% cd ~/Harpoon
% cvs -d `cat Code/CVS/Root` checkout Runtime

Note that there's no -r flag, as there is when you check out the Code module.

Unfortunately, CVS is broken. When you check out the Runtime like this, the garbage collector doesn't get checked out properly. Something is wrong with how CVS handles vendor tags. The following work-around (which you only have to do when checking out the Runtime from scratch) fixes the problem:

% cd ~/Harpoon/Runtime/Contrib/gc
% cvs update -r BOEHM_DIST
% cvs update -A

Ta-da.

Now read ~/Harpoon/Runtime/REQUIRED to find out what other packages must be installed on your machine. Use the --version option to the program names mentioned in that file to ensure that the versions on your machine are up-to-date. Recent versions can be found at ftp.gnu.org or freshmeat.net. Debian/unstable has recent-enough versions of these tools, and I've been told that RedHat 8 does as well.

If you are building applications for the StrongARM processor, you may need the arm-linux packages (ask Wes for them). If you are on a debian machine, installing cross-compilers is easy.

OK, now you're up to date. Doesn't that feel good? Run:

% cd ~/Harpoon/Runtime
% ./setup

Now let's configure the runtime. ./configure --help lists all the options; there are a lot of them, and they can be fairly overwhelming.

For a runtime configured to work with the precise-c backend, good options are:

% ./configure --with-precise-c --with-gc=conservative \
              --with-thread-model=heavy --disable-shared

After configuration, you'll want to actually build the sources:

% make

The runtime is installed and built! The ~/Harpoon/Code/bin/build-precisec script now ought to leave a (working?) executable in the Runtime directory when it's done whirring and clicking, like magic!

Here's a typical invocation, for 'Hello, World' in Hello.java:

% cd ~/Harpoon/Code
% javac -d . -g Hello.java
% bin/build-precisec Hello HI

This will create a directory of source files in ~/Harpoon/Code/asHI, a library of assembled source in ~/Harpoon/Runtime/HI-Java.a (actually, it's automatically cleaned unless something goes wrong), and an executable in ~/Harpoon/Runtime/runHI.

Fun, huh?

Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

cananian Last updated: 21 July 2003