Table of Contents
Here we begin with a discussion of how to invoke ACL2
interactively. We then discuss testing as well as the
certification of ACL2 community
books. We conclude with a discussion of
the documentation.
acl2-sources.
The sources and perhaps an executable image are located on that subdirectory.
However, if you have not saved an image but instead use the directions
for Running Without Building an Executable Image, skip
to When ACL2 Starts Up below.
The executable image is called acl2-sources/saved_acl2. You can
invoke ACL2 by running that image, e.g.,
mycomputer% dir/acl2-sources/saved_acl2
If you on a Unix-like system, then to make it easy to invoke ACL2 by
typing a short command, e.g.,
mycomputer% acl2
you may want to install an executable file on your path, e.g.,
/usr/local/bin/acl2, containing the following two lines:
#!/bin/csh -f
dir/acl2-sources/saved_acl2
Note: A carriage return in the file after the last line above may be important!
Most or all hosts then automatically enter the ACL2 ``command loop,'' an ACL2 read-eval-print loop with the prompt:
ACL2 !>If however a host leaves you in Common Lisp's read-eval-print loop, then you'll need to evaluate the Common Lisp expression
(ACL2::LP) or simply (LP) if the current
package is "ACL2".
Once in the ACL2 command loop, you can type an ACL2 term, typically followed by ``return'' or ``enter,'' and ACL2 will evaluate the term, print its value, and prompt you for another one. Below are three simple interactions:
ACL2 !>t T ACL2 !>'abc ABC ACL2 !>(+ 2 2) 4
To get out of the ACL2 command loop, type the :q command.
This returns you to the host Common Lisp. We sometimes call this
``raw Lisp.'' You may re-enter the command loop with
(LP) as above.
Note that when you are in raw Lisp you can overwrite or destroy ACL2 by executing inappropriate Common Lisp expressions. All bets are off once you've exited our loop. That said, many users do it. For example, you might exit our loop, activate some debugging or trace features in raw Lisp, and then reenter our loop. While developing proofs or tracking down problems, this is reasonable behavior.
Now you are ready to test your image.
An easy way to test the theorem prover is to type the following term to the ACL2 command loop:
:mini-proveallThis will cause a moderately long sequence of commands to be processed, each of which is first printed out as though you had typed it. Each will print some text, generally a proof of some conjecture. None should fail.
A more elaborate test is to certify
the community
books, which is a good idea anyhow; this is our next
topic. On a Unix-like system, you can also certify just a
small but useful subset of the books in a few minutes by
executing, in directory
dir/acl2-sources:
make certify-books-short
Certifying ACL2 Books
The community books have been contributed mainly by users and
may be obtained
as explained
elsewhere, to create subdirectory acl2-sources/books.
The general topic of books is discussed thoroughly in the ACL2
books
documentation.
Books should be ``certified'' before they are used. We do not distribute certificates with our books, mainly because certification produces compiled code specific to the host. You should certify the books locally, both as a test of your ACL2 image and because books generally need to be certified before they can be used.
It is easy to re-certify all the community books on a Unix-like system.
We recommend you do this. If you have entered ACL2, exit to the
operating system, e.g., evaluting the form, (quit), or by
control-d in many systems.
While connected to dir/acl2-sources, execute
make certify-booksThis will generate minimal output to the screen and will probably take an hour or two. Failure is indicated by the presence of
CERTIFICATION FAILED in the log.
To remove the files thus created, invoke:
make clean-books
The certify-books target does not
cause workshops/ books to be certified. If you want to
certify those books as well but you fetched a tarball rather than
using SVN to obtain your books, then you will first need to
download
the gzipped tar file of the workshops books to
the books/ directory, and then gunzip and extract it
to create subdirectory workshops.
You can certify all the community books, including books for the workshops
(including those from the 1999 workshop as described in the
(hardbound)
book Computer-Aided
Reasoning: ACL2 Case Studies), using the command:
make regressionOur main installation page contains a discussion of options for the above command, such as avoidance of `
make'
option -j.
By default, certification uses the image
dir/acl2-sources/saved_acl2. You may specify any ACL2
image, as long as it is either a command on your path or an absolute file
name, for example as follows.
make certify-books ACL2=my-acl2 make regression ACL2=/u/smith/projects/acl2/saved_acl2
We apologize to users of other than Unix-like systems (i.e., other
than Unix, GNU-Linux, and Mac OS X): we do not provide instructions
for recertifying all the community books on such systems, though
there are such environments that can be installed on Windows (e.g.,
Cygwin). The certification methods provided by the authors of the
books vary greatly and we codified them in the makefile, which is
named GNUmakefile, used above. Some subdirectories
of the community book (typically installed in acl2-sources/books/) contain either a
README file or a certify.lsp file. Users
who wish to certify one of these books and who cannot figure out (from
these scant clues) what to type to ACL2 should not hesitate to contact
the authors.
Next proceed to the section on Documentation.
/acl2-sources/emacs/emacs-acl2.el.
Utilities
offered by this file are documented near the top of the file. In
particular, this file automatically loads the
ACL2-Doc
Emacs browser.