Self Handbook v2 for Self 4.4 documentation

How to build the world

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How to build the world

Should you need to reconstruct a world from the source files, here’s how to do it. This section describes how to create a default object world by reading in the Self source code provided with your distribution (in Optional.SelfSource.tar.Z). You can also do this after writing the world out using the transporter (transporter fileOut fileOutAll).

To create the default object world:

  1. Start the Self VM:

    % Self
    Self Virtual Machine Version 4.0.2, Thu 09 Feb 95 19:41:30
    Copyright 1989-95: The Self Group (type _Credits for credits)
    
    VM#
  2. (Optional, but recommended.) Start the spy so you can watch the world fill up with objects:

    VM# _Spy: true
    

    Note

    that because the world is empty, you must use the primitive to do this.

  3. Read in the default world. To do this, ask Self to read expressions from a file:

    VM# 'all2.self' _RunScript
    

    Various configurations are possible: all2 is the released system; smallUI2 is the same but without the various example applications; and all contains the old (release 3.0) experimental user interface.

    Unless you have asked Self not to print script names, you should see something like:

    reading all2.self
    reading init.self
    . . .
  4. After all the files have been read in, Self will start the process scheduler, initialize its module cache, and print:

    “Self 0”

    That last line is the Self prompt indicating that the system is ready to read and evaluate expressions.

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