Design Rationale Group: Using DRG on Windows and Linux

This HOWTO contains a brief tutorial on how to set up your workstation and Lab account to develop and run DRG sketch applications. This is intended to cover the situation for most of us in DRG, i.e. running Windows 2000 on our workstation and coding under Linux via Exceed on fracas.ai.mit.edu. The following assumes that you have a lab username and account, and a workstation with Windows 2000 installed and running.

Later, this document will be expanded to handle other cases as need dictates.

Table of Contents

If you want to just run DRG systems, but not code, read the following:
Setting up your Windows 2000 workstation
Running DRG applications on Windows 2000
Running DRG applications on a Windows 2000 laptop outside the Lab network

If you want to code, read the above, and also the following:
Setting up your Lab account for coding

The following might be helpful if you have problems or questions:
Contact information
Frequently Asked Questions
Troubleshooting

Setting up your Windows 2000 Workstation
  1. Make sure you have followed all the steps from the lab's sysadmin pages for setting up a Windows 2000 computer within the lab network. In particular, make sure you have patched the registry to enable plain text passwords.

  2. Install a recent version of the Java JDK on your workstation:

    1. Right click My Computer and choose Map Network Drive.

    2. Type \\fracas\jdk as the share name, pick a drive letter, and enter your username and password if prompted.

    3. Open the folder install/windows/java1.3/. Run j2sdk1_3_0-win.exe. Please install it into the default directory; other DRG scripts may look for it there.

  3. If you want to code under Linux, you need to install Exceed, an X server for Windows. If you won't be coding, you can skip this step, but Exceed is pretty useful anyway so it can't hurt.

    1. Right click My Computer and choose Map Network Drive.

    2. Type \\calaboose\software as the share name, pick a drive letter, and enter your username and password if prompted.

    3. Open the folder Utils/Exceed/nt_intel/Software. Run setup.exe.

  4. Install SecureCRT, a Secure Shell Client:

    1. Map \\calaboose\software if you haven't done so already.

    2. In \\calaboose\software, open the folder Unix-Related/SecureCRT/Version 3.12 (or whatever the latest version is). Run scrt312.exe to install.

    3. Set up a SecureCRT session for fracas.ai.mit.edu:

      TBD.

Running DRG Applications under Win2k
  1. Set up your Windows 2000 workstation as described above.

  2. To run specific DRG systems extra software is usually needed, including Working Model 2D, Java-DDE, Allegro Common Lisp, and more. The best thing to do is to contact the person who worked on the system and ask them to set things up for you.

  3. Map the network drive \\maytag\drg. Open the folder releases and choose which system/demo you want to run. You should find a batch file in that folder; run it and hopefully everything will work!!! This isn't set up yet... Sorry.

Running DRG Applications on a laptop outside the lab network

Setting up your Lab account for coding
  1. Set up your Windows 2000 workstation as described above.

  2. Log into fracas over SSH using SecureCRT.

  3. Follow the instructions in the main DRG documentation file for checking the DRG code tree out of CVS. The following assumes you have put it into ~/drg.

  4. Add the following lines to your shell startup file, where <hostname> is the host name of your workstation:

    For bash, add to .bashrc: 

           umask 022;
       export DISPLAY=<hostname>:0.0;
       if [ -x ~/drg/scripts/setup_env.sh ]; then
         . ~/drg/scripts/setup_env.sh
       fi

    For tcsh, add to .tcshrc: 

           umask 022;
       setenv DISPLAY <hostname>:0.0;
       if (-x ~/drg/scripts/setup_env.csh) then
         source ~/drg/scripts/setup_env.csh
       endif

  5. Log out and log back in. Check your environment and make sure the setup_env script got sourced correctly: you should see several environment variables (which can be listed by typing printenv) starting with DRG_.

  6. You should now be able to run emacs on fracas and edit code in ~/drg/code/src. If you are not familiar with CVS, you might want to read the DRG-CVS-HOWTO.

    You can also edit your code with a Windows-based editor or IDE, by mapping your home directory (the share name is \\fracas\<username>), but you should run all of your CVS and make commands on fracas since they are set up for UNIX and not Windows. Also, please don't check config files that your editor uses into cvs.

  7. To run the code, map your home directory (\\fracas\username) and open the folder drg/??? and run the (which?) batch file there.

  8. (Optional) Set up your .emacs to make life with emacs and Java easier.

    Include the following in your .emacs: 

           (add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.java\\'" . jde-mode))

       (require 'jde)
       (require 'jdok)
       
       (add-hook 'java-mode-hook 'my-java-mode-hook)
       (defun my-java-mode-hook ()
       (define-key java-mode-map [?\C-c?\C-k] 'jdok-generate-javadoc-template)
       (define-key java-mode-map [?\C-c?\C-b] 'compile)
       (define-key java-mode-map [C-m] 'newline-and-indent)
       (define-key java-mode-map [C-tab] 'complete-tag)
       (define-key java-mode-map [C-i] 'complete-tag)
       (define-key java-mode-map [tab] 'c-indent-command)
       (setq version-control t)
       )

    This will let you edit Java files with JDE, a emacs mode for Java. JDE has a bazillion features. For more info, see its web page. Also, it will load jdok, which will automatically generate Javadoc documentation for the method or variable containing the cursor when you press C-c C-k. Finally, you can invoke the Makefile when you press C-c C-b.

    TODO: Document PCL-CVS? Create a separate Emacs-Java howto?

Contact Info

 These are the current developers/maintainers of various parts of DRG ... These are DRG alumna who can be consulted if available:

Frequently Asked Questions

Troubleshooting
mark a. foltz (mfoltz@ai.mit.edu)
$Id: DRG-HOWTO.html,v 1.3 2001/04/23 23:13:18 mfoltz Exp $