Some notes on multi-platform support of Isabelle

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Preamble

--------

The general programming model is that of a stylized ML + Scala + POSIX

environment, with hardly any system specific code in user-space tools

and packages.

The basic Isabelle system infrastructure provides some facilities to

make this work, e.g. see the ML structures File and Path, or functions

like bash_output.  The settings environment also provides some means

for portability, e.g. jvm_path to hold up the impression that Java on

Windows/Cygwin adheres to Isabelle/POSIX standards.

When producing add-on tools, it is important to stay within this clean

room of Isabelle, and refrain from overly ambitious system hacking.

The existing Isabelle scripts follow a certain style that might look

odd at first sight, but reflects long years of experience in getting

system plumbing right (which is quite hard).

Supported platforms

-------------------

The following hardware and operating system platforms are officially

supported by the Isabelle distribution (and bundled tools), with the

following reference versions (which have been selected to be neither

too old nor too new):

  x86-linux         SuSE 11.0 (atbroy51) (??)

  x86-darwin        Mac OS Leopard (macbroy30)

  x86-cygwin        Cygwin 1.7 (atbroy102)

  x86_64-linux      SuSE 11.0 (atbroy100)

  x86_64-darwin     Mac OS Leopard (macbroy30)

All of the above platforms are 100% supported by Isabelle -- end-users

should not have to care about the differences at all.  There are also

some secondary platforms where Poly/ML also happens to work:

  ppc-darwin

  sparc-solaris

  x86-solaris

  x86-bsd

There is no guarantee that Isabelle add-ons work on these fringe

platforms.  Even Isabelle/Scala already fails on ppc-darwin due to

lack of JVM 1.6 support by Apple.

32 bit vs. 64 bit platforms

---------------------------

64 bit hardware becomes more and more important for power users.

Add-on tools need to work seamlessly without manual user

configuration, although it is often sufficient to fall back on 32 bit

executables.

The ISABELLE_PLATFORM setting variable refers to the 32 bit version of

the platform, even on 64 bit hardware.  Power-tools need to indicate

64 bit support explicitly, via the (optional) ISABELLE_PLATFORM64

setting.  The following bash expression prefers the 64 bit platform,

if that is available:

  "${ISABELLE_PLATFORM64:-$ISABELLE_PLATFORM}"

Note that ML and JVM may have a different idea of the platform,

depending on the respective binaries that are actually run.

Dependable system tools

-----------------------

The following portable system tools can be taken for granted:

* GNU bash as uniform shell on all platforms.  The POSIX "standard"

  shell /bin/sh is *not* appropriate, because there are too many

  different implementations of it.

* Perl as largely portable system programming language.  In some

  situations Python may serve as an alternative, but it usually

  performs not as well in addressing various delicate details of

  operating system concepts (processes, signals, sockets etc.).

* Scala with Java Runtime 1.6.  The Isabelle/Pure.jar library irons

  out many oddities and portability problems of the Java platform.

Known problems

--------------

* Mac OS: If MacPorts is installed there is some danger that

  accidental references to its shared libraries are created

  (e.g. libgmp).  Use otool -L to check if compiled binaries also work

  without MacPorts.

* Mac OS: If MacPorts is installed and its version of Perl takes

  precedence over /usr/bin/perl in the PATH, then the end-user needs

  to take care of installing extra modules, e.g. for HTTP support.

  Such add-ons are usually included in Apple's /usr/bin/perl by

  default.

* The Java runtime has its own idea about the underlying platform,

  e.g. on a 64 bit machine Isabelle/ML could be x86-linux, but the JVM

  could be x86_64-linux.  This affects Java native libraries in

  particular -- which cause extra portability problems and can make

  the JVM crash anyway.

  In Isabelle/Scala isabelle.Platform.jvm_platform identifies the JVM

  platform.  Since there can be many different Java installations on

  the same machine, which can also be run with different options,

  reliable JVM platform identification works from inside the running

  JVM only.