The Isabelle System Distribution

Version information

This is the internal repository version of Isabelle. The current line of development introduces many new features, while attempting to keep incompatibilities over Isabelle98-X at a minimum. See the NEWS file in the distribution for more details.

System requirements

Isabelle requires a real Unix box with sufficient resources. Fun starts at about 32-64 MB of free main memory (somewhat depending on your ML system), with several tens of MB disk space and a decent CPU. Speaking by today's hardware standards, any moderate Linux box should give a very nice platform for Isabelle.

Furthermore, Isabelle needs the following software, which is not part of the distribution:

A full Standard ML Compiler (e.g. Poly/ML).
The GNU bash shell (version 1.x or 2.x).
Perl 5.x - the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister (Perl 4.x is not sufficient).

The following ML system and platform combinations are known to work very well:

Poly/ML 3.x on Linux and Sparc/Solaris.
SML/NJ 110.x on any Unix platform (Linux, Suns, SGI etc.).

Poly/ML, previously a commercial product, is back in the free world. It is by far the best compiler for running Isabelle, requiring the least memory and offering the highest performance.

SML/NJ needs lots of store and disk space, but supports many more platforms. The current official release is 110. Basically, we still support the old 0.93 release, but do not recommend to use it under normal circumstances.

MLWorks is a commercial ML programming environment developed by Harlequin and was unfortunately withdrawn after that company was taken over. Isabelle on MLWorks 2.0 works reasonably well. It is about 20% faster than on SML/NJ while using slightly less memory and disk space. A few features (e.g. ML top-level pretty printing) are not supported, though.

Installation

RPM packages are available for Isabelle/HOL and ZF on the Linux/x86 platform. The system may be easily built from scratch as well, taking the traditional tar.gz distribution. See file INSTALL as distributed with Isabelle for more information. Further background information may be found in the Isabelle System Manual, distributed with the sources (directory doc).

User interfaces

The distribution includes only a very primitive interface based on ordinary terminal sessions. Advanced interfaces are available from other sources:

Proof General by David Aspinall and others is a generic Emacs interface for proof assistants, including Isabelle (both for the classic and Isar version). Proof General is suitable for use by pacifists and Emacs militants alike. Its most prominent feature is script management, providing a metaphor of live proof script editing. Proof General has recently gained a rather large following of both beginning and expert users of Isabelle.
Isamode by David Aspinall is an older and simpler Emacs interface for Isabelle. It runs under recent versions of XEmacs.

Other sources of information

The Isabelle Page

The Isabelle home page may be accessed both from Cambridge and Munich:

Mailing list

The electronic mailing list isabelle-users@cl.cam.ac.uk provides a forum for Isabelle users to discuss problems and exchange information. To join, send a message to isabelle-users-request@cl.cam.ac.uk.

Personal mail

Lawrence C Paulson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge
Pembroke Street
Cambridge CB2 3QG
England

E-mail: lcp@cl.cam.ac.uk
Phone: +44-223-334600
Fax: +44-223-334748

Tobias Nipkow
Institut fuer Informatik
T. U. Muenchen
D-80290 Muenchen
Germany

E-mail: nipkow@in.tum.de
Phone: +49-89-289-22690
Fax: +49-89-289-28183

Please report any problems you encounter. While we shall try to be helpful, we can accept no responsibility for the deficiencies of Isabelle and their consequences.