1.1 Unix Installation

We will use as an example the installation for GNU/Linux. The installation for other unix systems is similar.

MIT/GNU Scheme is distributed as a compressed `tar' file. The tar file contains two directories, called bin and lib. The bin directory contains two executable files, scheme and bchscheme. The lib directory contains one subdirectory, lib/mit-scheme, that Scheme uses while it is executing.

The goal of the installation is to put the executable files in a directory where they will be executed as commands, and to put the library files in some convenient place where Scheme can find them.

There are two ways to install this software: the conventional way in /usr/local, and the alternative way, in locations of your choice. We encourage you to install this software in /usr/local if possible.

To install the software in /usr/local, execute the following commands, substituting for version the version of Scheme you wish to install, or the date of the snapshot if you are installing a snapshot, and for platform the platform you are on, such as ‘ix86-gnu-linux’ or ‘ix86-apple-darwin’:

     cd /usr/local
     rm -f bin/scheme bin/bchscheme
     rm -rf lib/mit-scheme
     gzip -cd mit-scheme-version-platform.tar.gz | tar xvf -

After executing these commands, the executable files will be in /usr/local/bin, and the library files will be in /usr/local/lib/mit-scheme. No further configuration is required.

To install the files in directories of your choice:

• First unpack the distribution:

            mkdir temp
            cd temp
            gzip -cd mit-scheme-version-platform.tar.gz | tar xvf -
  

• Next, move the contents of the bin directory to somewhere convenient that is on your execution path. For example, if you had a directory ~/bin on your path, you would do this:

            mv bin/* ~/bin/.
  

• Next, move or copy the lib/mit-scheme directory somewhere convenient. For example, you could move it to your home directory:

            mv lib/mit-scheme ~/.
  

  Note that if you have unpacked the distribution on a different drive than the one you plan to store the mit-scheme directory on, you must use the command cp -pr rather than mv.

• Next, you must tell Scheme where to find the mit-scheme directory. This can be done in one of two ways. The first way is to bind the environment variable MITSCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH to the full path to the directory, e.g. in bash you would do

            export MITSCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH=~/mit-scheme
  

  You should put this environment-variable binding in one of your shell init files, e.g. for bash it might go in the .bashrc file.

  The second way is to use a command-line argument when invoking Scheme, e.g.

            scheme --library ~/mit-scheme
  

• You should now be able to run MIT/GNU Scheme. See Running Scheme, for more information.