kForth-32

32-bit Forth System for x86-GNU/Linux

Copyright © 1998--2018 Krishna Myneni, [email protected]

LICENSE

kForth-32 for x86-GNU/Linux is provided under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL), v3.0 or later.

INSTALLATION

The following packages are required to build and maintain kForth-32 from its source package, on a GNU/Linux system:

binutils
gcc
gcc-c++
glibc
glibc-devel
libstdc++-devel
make
readline
readline-devel
ncurses
ncurses-devel
patchutils

Some or all of these packages may already be installed on your GNU/Linux system, but if they are not, you should install them for your GNU/Linux distribution. GNU C/C++ version 4.0 or later should be used.

To build:

1. Unpack the files if you obtained them as a .zip or .tar.gz file.

2. Change to the kForth-32-branch/src/ directory, where "branch" is the project branch, e.g. master, and type make to build the executables. A successful build results in two executables, kforth32 and kforth32-fast.

3. Move the executables into the search path. It is recommended to move the kForth-32 executables to /usr/local/bin . You must be root to do this.

4. Specify the default directory in which kforth32 will search for Forth source files not found in the current directory. The environment variable KFORTH_DIR may be set to this directory. For example, under the BASH shell, if you want the default directory to be your ~/kForth-32-branch/forth-src/ directory, add the following lines to your .bash_profile file (or .profile on some systems):

   KFORTH_DIR=~/kForth-32-branch/forth-src
   export KFORTH_DIR
   

Forth Source Examples

Sample source code files, typically with the extension .4th, are included in the kForth-32-branch/forth-src/ directory. These files serve as programming examples for kForth-32, in addition to providing useful libraries of Forth words and applications written in Forth. Within the forth-src/ subdirectory, you will find additional subdirectories containing different categories of Forth libraries or applications. These include:

system-test/ A set of automated tests to validate the Forth system against the Forth-94 standard

fsl/ modules from the Forth Scientific Library, including test code; also note the subdirs, fsl/extras/ and fsl/demo/

games/ console games written in Forth

libs/ Forth interfaces to C and Fortran shared object libraries, such as X11 and the GNU Multiprecision Library, gmp.

benchmarks/ simple benchmarks to compare the relative speed of Forth systems

Important system-level files in the forth-src/ subdirectory include,

• ans-words.4th Forth-94 words provided in source form
• strings.4th String handling library
• files.4th Standard Forth words for file i/o
• ansi.4th ANSI terminal control
• dump.4th Forth DUMP utility
• asm-x86.4th 32-bit x86 assembler ported to kForth-32
• syscalls.4th Operating System calls
• tester.4th Test harness used by much of the test code

Documentation

Prior web-page documentation is the process of being packaged as a pdf file. The current version is located in kForth-32-branch/doc/