Soar Tools Interface (STI) Download Page

Software Specification

This spec describes the overall design for the STI.  It does not currently contain details on how to hook other tools to the STI.  However, the process is not very complicated and the functions that the client tool needs to call are documented in the spec.  Also, the test application source shows a simple example of connecting to the interface as either a tool or a runtime (this test app only runs on Windows, but inspecting the source should be sufficient).  Please contact us at  info at threepenny.net  if you have questions.

Running the Software

1. The Soar Tools Interface connects Visual Soar and the Soar Runtime 8.3 (TSI).  Visual Soar requires Java support and the TSI requires Tcl support.  Specific versions of both the Java Runtime (JRE) and Tcl are required.  Please see the Soar web page at the University of Michigan for more details on the requirements for Soar 8.3 and Visual Soar.
2. Once Java and Tcl have been installed (following the instructions at the U of M site) then STI may be run by following the steps shown below.

• Running on Windows:
  1) Download, unzip anywhere, double-click on VisualSoar.jar or start-soar.tcl
   
• Running on Linux::
  1) Download, unzip anywhere.
  2) Set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to your STI folder.
      A sample batch file for doing this is given in setenv.bsh which you run with "source setenv.bsh".
      If you wish to use this file you will need to edit it so that it includes the path to where you installed the STI folder.
      You may also modify your global settings (e.g. in .bash_profile) if you prefer.
  3) java -jar VisualSoar.jar for VisualSoar
  4) ./start-soar.tcl for Soar

Building the Software

1. We have provided batch files to make it relatively simple to build all of the software.  These batch files will build Visual Soar, Soar TSI and the new STI interface files.  These batch files were created primarily for our own convenience in building all components as Soar itself does not currently provide a standard method for doing this.  As such, the files may be incomplete or not work in all cases.  If there are problems building Visual Soar or Soar 8.3 please contact Soar Tech for support.
2. Details of the build process are including in the file "readme.txt" in the source downloads.  The information is reproduced here for convenience.
3. IMPORTANT NOTE:  The current clean scripts are not complete, so cleaning (i.e. removing object files) will need to be done manually after the build.
   You may wish to make a copy of the source before building if you wish to keep a "clean" copy for any reason.
    
   • Building on Windows:
   1) To build Soar, VisualSoar and STI on Windows
      edit the file windows-env.bat and set the paths
      appropriately for your system.

   2) Run make-all-windows <version> where <version> == 020 for example.
      (This needs to be done from the command prompt in the Soar folder).

   3) Results of the build should end up in Releases folder.
      The files Soarbuild.txt, STIBuild.txt and VSBuild.txt in that
      folder contain the output from the different stages of the build.

   Alternatively, to build just the STI components, the workspace
   "STI/STI.dsw" can be opened in Visual Studio 6 (or 7) and the
   STI components can be built from there.  Results go into
   "STI/Debug" or "STI/Release" as appropriate.
    

   • Building on Linux:
   1) To build soar, VisualSoar and STI on Linux
      make sure all of the tools are on your path.
      (See windows-env.bat for list of tools if needed).

   2) You may need to convert the soar C source files
      from Windows CRLF to Linux CR's in order for them
      to build correctly.  The Tools folder contains
      "dos-unix" and "unix-dos" utilities that will do this
      conversion (e.g. dos-unix *.c to convert all files in
      a folder to unix end of line markers).
      This is only an issue for the .c and .h files in the Soar 8.3 folders.

   3) Run ./make-all-linux.csh to build everything
      (a version number is not yet supported on this script as it is in Windows).
      The results will end up in the Releases folder as
      for Windows.

   Alternatively, to build just the STI components, the
   makefile "STI/Makefile" can be executed to compile
   all of the STI components.
    

Software Downloads

Note: Both source files are identical -- the only difference is the compression method used (zip or tar.gz)

Release notes are available here.