SwifForth for Linux and MacOS
Installation Instructions
SwiftForth for Linux and MacOS is distributed as a tarball and installation is a man-
ual procedure. But don’t worry, it’s easy.
In the text below, the tag <version> is replaced by the current SwiftForth version
number (e.g. "3.2.0"). The tag <os> is one of "osx" or "linux" (without the quotes).
Download SwiftForth-linux-macos-<version>.tgz from the download link provided by
FORTH, Inc. Extract the file into the installation directory with:
$ tar xzf .../SwiftForth-linux-macos-<version>.tgz
where “$” represents the shell command prompt and “...” is the directory in which
you saved the SwiftForth tarball. This will the directory “SwiftForth” along with its
subdirectories in your current working directory.
In order to run SwiftForth, you can either add .../SwiftForth/bin/linux (for Linux sys-
tems) or .../SwiftForth/bin/osx (for MacOS systems) to your PATH, or make symbolic
links to the executable files "sf" (SwiftForth) and "sfk" (SwiftForth kernel) in a direc-
tory that’s on your PATH.
Most Linux distributions include $HOME/bin in $PATH if it exists, so if this is the case
in your system and you have unpacked SwiftForth in your home directory, you can
simply do the following:
$ cd $HOME/bin
$ ln -s ../SwiftForth/bin/linux/sf
$ ln -s ../SwiftForth/bin/linux/sfk1
If your MacOS installation does not have $HOME/bin, you can create one:
cd ~
mkdir bin
Then add the symlinks as above:
$ cd $HOME/bin
$ ln -s ../SwiftForth/bin/osx/sf
$ ln -s ../SwiftForth/bin/osx/sfk
For both Linux and MacOS, make sure $HOME/bin is in your PATH (in $HOME/.pro-
file). If you have to add it, log out and back in with a new terminal session and check
it:
echo $PATH
If you installed SwiftForth in /usr/local, you may choose to perform the same proce-
dure shown above, but with the symlinks in /usr/local/bin (which is normally in all
users’ paths).
1.The SwiftForth kernel binary is not included in the evaluation version.
Installation Instructions 1
SwifForth for Linux and MacOS
Now you should be able to run SwiftForth:
$ sf
SwiftForth i386-<OS> <rel> <date>
Where <OS> is the operating system (Linux or MacOS), <rel> is the release version
and <date> is the date the release was built.
Type BYE to exit SwiftForth.
After installation, PDF copies of the SwiftForth Reference Manual, Forth Program-
mer’s Handbook, and the ANS Forth Standard can be found in the SwiftForth/doc
directory.
2 Installation Instructions