GNU/Linux AI & Alife HOWTO by John Eikenberry (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📕

GCL is maximally efficient on such calls. It has a conservative

garbage collector which allows great freedom for the C compiler

to put Lisp values in arbitrary registers.

It has a source level Lisp debugger for interpreted code, with

display of source code in an Emacs window. Its profiling tools

(based on the C profiling tools) count function calls and the

time spent in each function.

GNU Prolog

� Web site: gnu-prolog.inria.fr

� Web site: pauillac.inria.fr/~diaz/gnu-prolog/

GNU Prolog is a free Prolog compiler with constraint solving

over finite domains developed by Daniel Diaz.

GNU Prolog accepts Prolog+constraint programs and produces

native binaries (like gcc does from a C source). The obtained

executable is then stand-alone. The size of this executable can

be quite small since GNU Prolog can avoid to link the code of

most unused builtin predicates. The performances of GNU Prolog

are very encouraging (comparable to commercial systems).

Beside the native-code compilation, GNU Prolog offers a

classical interactive interpreter (toplevel) with a debugger.

The Prolog part conforms to the ISO standard for Prolog with

many extensions very useful in practice (global variables, OS

interface, sockets,…).

GNU Prolog also includes an efficient constraint solver over

Finite Domains (FD). This opens contraint logic pogramming to

the user combining the power of constraint programming to the

declarativity of logic programming.

IBAL

� Web site: www.eecs.harvard.edu/~avi/IBAL/

IBAL (pronounced “eyeball”) is a general-purpose language for

probabilistic modeling, parameter estimation and decision

making. It generalizes Bayesian networks, hidden Markov models,

stochastic context free grammars, Markov decision processes, and

allows many new possibilities. It also provides a convenient

programming-language framework with libraries, automatic type

checking and so on.

lush

� Web site: lush.sourceforge.net

Lush is an object-oriented programming language designed for

researchers, experimenters, and engineers interested in large-scale numerical and graphic applications. Lush is designed to be

used in situations where one would want to combine the

flexibility of a high-level, weakly-typed interpreted language,

with the efficiency of a strongly-typed, natively-compiled

language, and with the easy integration of code written in C,

C++, or other languages.

Maude

� Web site: maude.cs.uiuc.edu

Maude is a high-performance reflective language and system

supporting both equational and rewriting logic specification and

programming for a wide range of applications. Maude has been

influenced in important ways by the OBJ3 language, which can be

regarded as an equational logic sublanguage. Besides supporting

equational specification and programming, Maude also supports

rewriting logic computation.

Mercury

� Web page: www.cs.mu.oz.au/research/mercury/

Mercury is a new, purely declarative logic programming language.

Like Prolog and other existing logic programming languages, it

is a very high-level language that allows programmers to

concentrate on the problem rather than the low-level details

such as memory management. Unlike Prolog, which is oriented

towards exploratory programming, Mercury is designed for the

construction of large, reliable, efficient software systems by

teams of programmers. As a consequence, programming in Mercury

has a different flavor than programming in Prolog.

Mozart

� Web page: www.mozart-oz.org/

The Mozart system provides state-of-the-art support in two

areas: open distributed computing and constraint-based

inference. Mozart implements Oz, a concurrent object-oriented

language with dataflow synchronization. Oz combines concurrent

and distributed programming with logical constraint-based

inference, making it a unique choice for developing multiagent

systems. Mozart is an ideal platform for both general-purpose

distributed applications as well as for hard problems requiring

sophisticated optimization and inferencing abilities. We have

developed applications in scheduling and timetabling, in

placement and configuration, in natural language and knowledge

representation, multiagent systems and sophisticated

collaborative tools.

SWI Prolog

� Web page: www.swi-prolog.org

SWI is a free version of prolog in the Edinburgh Prolog family.

It is licensed under the LGPL with many nice features for an AI

researcher, such as; a large library of builtin predicates, a

module system, garbage collection, a two-way interface with the

C/C++ language, coroutines, multithreading, multiple constraint

library, the XPCE graphics toolkit, plus many more.

Push

� Web site: hampshire.edu/lspector/push.html

Push is a programming language intended primarily for use in

evolutionary computation systems (such as genetic programming

systems), as the language in which evolving programs are

expressed. Push has an unusually simple syntax, which

facilitates the development (or evolution) of mutation and

recombination operators that generate and manipulate programs.

Despite this simple syntax, Push provides more expressive power

than most other program representations that are used for

program evolution.

Includes several libraries/systems for working with GP (all info

on the Push page). PushGP is a genetic programming system that

evolves programs in the Push programming language. Pushpop is an

“autoconstructive evolution” system that also evolves Push

programs. SwarmEvolve 2.0 is an autoconstuctive evolution

system in which flying agents, controlled by Push programs,

evolve in a 3D environment.

Kali Scheme

� Web site: http://community.schemewiki.org/kali-scheme/

Kali Scheme is a distributed implementation of Scheme that

permits efficient transmission of higher-order objects such as

closures and continuations. The integration of distributed

communication facilities within a higher-order programming

language engenders a number of new abstractions and paradigms

for distributed computing. Among these are user-specified load-balancing and migration policies for threads, incrementally-linked distributed computations, agents, and parameterized

client-server applications. Kali Scheme supports concurrency and

communication using first-class procedures and continuations. It

integrates procedures and continuations into a message-based

distributed framework that allows any Scheme object (including

code vectors) to be sent and received in a message.

RScheme

� Web site:www.rscheme.org

RScheme is an object-oriented, extended version of the Scheme

dialect of Lisp. RScheme is freely redistributable, and offers

reasonable performance despite being extraordinarily portable.

RScheme can be compiled to C, and the C can then compiled with a

normal C compiler to generate machine code. By default, however,

RScheme compiles to bytecodes which are interpreted by a

(runtime) virtual machine. This ensures that compilation is fast

and keeps code size down. In general, we recommend using the

(default) bytecode code generation system, and only compiling

your time-critical code to machine code. This allows a nice

adjustment of space/time tradeoffs. (see web site for details)

Scheme 48

� Web site: s48.org/

Scheme 48 is a Scheme implementation based on a virtual machine

architecture. Scheme 48 is designed to be straightforward,

flexible, reliable, and fast. It should be easily portable to

32-bit byte-addressed machines that have POSIX and ANSI C

support. In addition to the usual Scheme builtin procedures

and a development environment, library software includes support

for hygienic macros (as described in the Revised^4 Scheme

report), multitasking, records, exception handling, hash tables,

arrays, weak pointers, and FORMAT. Scheme 48 implements and

exploits an experimental module system loosely derived from

Standard ML and Scheme Xerox. The development environment

supports interactive changes to modules and interfaces.

SCM (Scheme)

� Web site: www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~jaffer/SCM.html

SCM conforms to the Revised^4 Report on the Algorithmic Language

Scheme and the IEEE P1178 specification. Scm is written in C. It

uses the following utilities (all available at the ftp site).

� SLIB (Standard Scheme Library) is a portable Scheme library

which is intended to provide compatibility and utility

functions for all standard Scheme implementations, including

SCM, Chez, Elk, Gambit, MacScheme, MITScheme, scheme->C,

Scheme48, T3.1, and VSCM, and is available as the file

slib2c0.tar.gz. Written by Aubrey Jaffer.

� JACAL is a symbolic math system written in Scheme, and is

available as the file jacal1a7.tar.gz.

� Interfaces to standard libraries including REGEX string

regular expression matching and the CURSES screen management

package.

� Available add-on packages including an interactive debugger,

database, X-window graphics, BGI graphics, Motif, and Open-Windows packages.

� A compiler (HOBBIT, available separately) and dynamic linking

of compiled modules.

Shift

� Web site: www.path.berkeley.edu/shift/

Shift is a programming language for describing dynamic networks

of hybrid automata. Such systems consist of components which

can be created, interconnected and destroyed as the system

evolves. Components exhibit hybrid behavior, consisting of

continuous-time phases separated by discrete-event transitions.

Components may evolve independently, or they may interact

through their inputs, outputs and exported events. The

interaction network itself may evolve.

YAP Prolog

� Web site: www.ncc.up.pt/~vsc/Yap/

� Sourceforge site: sourceforge.net/projects/yap/

YAP is a high-performance Prolog compiler developed at

LIACC/Universidade do Porto. Its Prolog engine is based in the

WAM (Warren Abstract Machine), with several optimizations for

better performance. YAP follows the Edinburgh tradition, and is

largely compatible with DEC-10 Prolog, Quintus Prolog, and

especially with C-Prolog. Work on the more recent version of YAP

strives at several goals:

� Portability: The whole system is now written in C. YAP

compiles in popular 32 bit machines, such as Suns and Linux

PCs, and in a 64 bit machines, the Alphas running OSF Unix

and Linux.

� Performance: We have optimised the emulator to obtain

performance comparable to or better than well-known Prolog

systems. In fact, the current version of YAP performs better

than the original one, written in assembly language.

� Robustness: We have tested the system with a large array of

Prolog applications.

� Extensibility: YAP was designed internally from the beginning

to encapsulate manipulation of terms. These principles were

used, for example, to implement a simple and powerful C-interface. The new version of YAP extends these principles to

accomodate extensions to the unification algorithm, that we

believe will be useful to implement extensions such as

constraint programming.

� Completeness: YAP has for a long time provided most builtins

expected from a Edinburgh Prolog implementation. These

include I/O functionality, database operations, and modules.

Work on YAP aims now at being compatible with the Prolog

standard.

� Openess: We would like to make new development of YAP open to

the user community.

� Research: YAP has been a vehicle for research within and

outside our group. Currently research is going on on

parallelisation and tabulation, and we have started work to

support constraint handling.

8. Missing & Dead

This is my area for old or bad entries. The MIA section is for entires

for which I no longer have a valid home page. If you have any

information regarding where I can find these now please let me know.

The Dead section is for projects that seem dead. Moving them here

allows me to keep my the main sections clean while allowing for

interested parties to correct me in which case I can just move it

back.

8.1. MIA - Projects missing linkage.

CASE

� Web site: www.iu.hio.no/~cell/

� FTP site: ftp.iu.hio.no/pub/

CASE (Cellular Automaton Simulation Environment) is a C++

toolkit for visualizing discrete models in two dimensions: so-called cellular automata. The aim of this project is to create

an integrated framework for creating generalized cellular

automata using the best, standardized technology of the day.

The Cellular Automata Simulation System

� Web site: staff.vbi.vt.edu/dana/ca/cellular.shtml

The system consists of a compiler for the Cellang cellular

automata programming language, along with the corresponding

documentation, viewer, and various tools. Cellang has been

undergoing refinement for the last several years (1991-1995),

with corresponding upgrades to the compiler. Postscript

versions of the tutorial and language reference manual are

available for those wanting more detailed information. The most

important distinguishing features of Cellang, include support

for:

� any number of dimensions;

� compile time specification of each dimensions size; cell

neighborhoods of any size (though bounded at compile time)

and shape;

� positional and time dependent neighborhoods;

� associating multiple values (fields), including arrays, with

each cell;

� associating a potentially unbounded number of mobile agents [

Agents are mobile entities based on a mechanism of the same

name in the Creatures system,