[Swarm-Support] Installation of Swarm from packages on 64-bit Ubuntu

[Steve Railsback]

I recently installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 10.10 (the current 
version), and then Swarm using Paul Johnson's packages. (My Swarm codes 
seem to run in about 2/3 the time in 64-bit vs. 32, so there is a 
significant advantage to 64.)

(The same method should work for 32-bit, I think. Just find and download 
Paul's 32-bit versions of BLT and Swarm; Paul recently posted their 
locations:
http://www.swarm.org/pipermail/support/2011-March/015939.html )

Here is how I did the installation:

1. Use the Synaptic Package Manager (under the "System" menu) to install 
these packages:

tk
tcl
libhdf5-serial-dev

Just start typing the package name in the "Quick search" dialog and it 
will find the package. I used the latest versions: 8.4.16-2 of tk and tcl.

2. Download BLT and Swarm packages from Paul's site. If you just click 
on these links in your browser, Ubuntu should download them to your 
/Downloads directory. Paul currently has them here:
http://pj.freefaculty.org/Ubuntu/10.04/amd64/blt/blt_2.4z-5_amd64.deb
http://pj.freefaculty.org/Ubuntu/10.04/amd64/swarm/libswarm-dev_2.4.0-1_amd64.deb
http://pj.freefaculty.org/Ubuntu/10.04/amd64/swarm/libswarm0_2.4.0-1_amd64.deb
http://pj.freefaculty.org/Ubuntu/10.04/amd64/swarm/libswarm0-dbg_2.4.0-1_amd64.deb

(I did not install Java Swarm; there's another package to add it.)

3. Now install the BLT and Swarm packages. You can just double-click on 
each one (BLT first) in Nautilus (the Linux file "explorer"). This opens 
the Ubuntu Software Center, where you can just click an "install" button.

4. Now you just need to set your "Swarmhome" environment variable. The 
standard way is to edit the hidden file ".bashrc" that should be in your 
home directory ( /home/MyUserName ). Just open this file in gedit and 
add these 3 lines to the bottom:

#Set Swarm home
SWARMHOME=/
export SWARMHOME

Now, after you log out and back in, you should be able to compile and 
run Swarm codes.

/////////////////////

PLEASE BE AWARE that Paul's current 64-bit package uses the latest 
development version of Swarm, which has at least one important change 
from the stable version 2.2. The Swarm class "Zone" was changed to 
"SwarmZone". So if your code creates zones using statements like this:

  modelZone = [Zone create: globalZone];

you will need to change it to:

  modelZone = [SwarmZone create: globalZone];

However, where you declare a zone:

  id <Zone> modelZone;

do *NOT* change it to "SwarmZone".

///////////////////////

Steve Railsback