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Installing E 0.8.10alpha1 on Unix-Like Platforms

Installing The Java Runtime

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Installing E

Unpack E into the directory in which you wish it to be installed. Please read the README.txt file and follow the instrustions. When you're done, you should have an "eprops.txt" file (E configuration preferences) and an "e" file (a bash driver script). For reference, here are my "eprops.txt" and "e" files after I tried to get these to work on my system. When you try to run the "e" driver from a bash shell, or similarly, when you try to run a *.e file as an executable, if you see the error

declare: unknown option: `-a'

this means your version of bash is too old. You should upgrade. To check your bash version, type

$ echo $BASH_VERSION

to your bash shell. You'll need a bash >= 2.01.

In the meantime, you can ignore the "e" driver script and invoke java yourself. Let's say you installed E in the directory "/ehome" and you want to run the "elmer.e" script:

$ java -jar -De.home=/ehome /ehome/e.jar /ehome/scripts/elmer.e

Once you have the appropriate version of bash, and if you put /ehome/scripts on your PATH, you'll instead be able to simply say

$ elmer.e

and get the same effect. Or, you can manually invoke E without any scripts in order to get an E shell:

$ java -jar -De.home=/ehome /ehome/e.jar
? 2 + 3
# value: 5

? #<Ctrl-D>

That last line indicates that you can exit the E command line interpreter by typing the Control-D character, as with many other Unix programs.

You should now proceed to the E Tutorial.