Ara Software Download

The following software packages are available for downloading here:

The Ara source distribution.
This comprises the source code for the Ara core and for the adapted Tcl and C/C++ interpreters, a number of example programs, ready-to-use binaries of the Ara shell arash for the supported platforms (see below) plus assorted documentation. The documentation comprises all material named in the "Documents" section plus two additional technical notes on Ara programming, covering conventions for native code in Ara and writing stub functions for the C/C++ interpreter.
You can download Ara (version 1.0a) here. This version runs on Sparc Solaris, Intel Linux, and Sparc SunOS platforms.
The GNU C compiler, version 2.7.2, and the GNU binutils, version 2.7, are needed to compile mobile agents written in C/C++. Without this, your Ara system is able to execute such agents (e.g. agents arriving through the network), but not able to generate them.
Note that these two packages must be installed as patched cross tools targetting a Sun 3 architecture (this is explained in the Ara Installation and Configuration Guide), so you cannot use a native installation you might happen to have at your site.
The compiler for mobile agents written in C/C++ uses the tools flex and bison. These tools are installed at many sites, but if your site does not provide them (or provides too dated versions), you may find flex and bison here as well.
The Dld dynamic linking package is an alternative means of handling native code agents on platforms which do not provide the dynamic linking library libdl. Again, this is explained in the Ara Installation and Configuration Guide. You do not need this tool if your platform provides libdl, or if you choose to configure Ara without support for native code agents.

Holger Peine