Installing IDyOM¶

Prerequisites¶

• Steel Bank Common Lisp [SBCL]
• Quicklisp is a library manager for Common Lisp. Just download quicklisp.lisp and follow the instructions here
• An SQL database. I would recommend SQLite which is already installed on most recent flavours of MacOS and Linux.

It is possible to use SBCL in a terminal window but I strongly suggest using Emacs and installing Slime (a Lisp interface for Emacs) which is easily done using Quicklisp (see instructions here).

See the CLSQL Manual for information on other database systems you can use and how to access them from Common Lisp.

Install Quicklisp¶

First download quicklisp.lisp to a directory DIR_A. You can then install Quicklisp to another directory of your choice DIR_B:

(load "/DIR_A/quicklisp.lisp")
(quicklisp-quickstart:install :path "/DIR_B/quicklisp/")
(ql:add-to-init-file)

Use the full pathnames for both directories (Lisp doesn't interpret shell substitutions like ~ for the home directory).

See the Quicklisp website for documentation about other features of Quicklisp.

Download IDyOM¶

Download the following Lisp libraries, and unzip them into DIR/quicklisp/local-projects/

• idyom

Removing previous installations: If you have any previous installations of these libraries, you would do well to remove them, especially if they are in folders such as '~/.local' which are automatically scanned by asdf/quicklisp. You may also want to clear the corresponding entries from asdf:*central-registry* in your .sbclrc file, should any exist.

Set *idyom-root*¶

IDyOM requires the global variable *idyom-root* be set to a suitable working directory, where it stores models, cross-validation settings, cached results etc. By default, this is a directory called 'idyom' in your home directory. Alternatively, you can customise the location by setting the variable *idyom-root* to point to the desired directory by including the following in your .sbclrc file, located in your home directory (you must restart SBCL for this to take effect):

(defvar *idyom-root* "/FULL/PATH/TO/WORKING/DIR/")

However you configure this, you must ensure that the directory exists (create it if it doesn't) and you will also need to create three directories below *idyom-root* for IDyOM to use: *idyom-root*/data/cache/, data/models/ and data/resampling/.

Install IDyOM¶

You can now use Quicklisp to install IDyOM:

(ql:quickload "idyom")

This will also install the third-party Lisp libraries IDyOM depends on.

(If you get an error which brings up the debugger, press 2 [ACCEPT] and the installation should complete.)

Create a database¶

IDyOM is now installed, but you will need a database in order to use it. For example, to create an SQLite database called 'example.db' in directory DIR:

(clsql:connect '("DIR/example.db") :if-exists :old :database-type :sqlite3)

Alternatively, to connect to an existing local MySQL database:

(clsql:connect '("localhost" "example-database" "username" "password") :if-exists :old :database-type :mysql)

See the CLSQL documentation for more on connect and supported databases.

Finally, for a new database:

(mtp-admin:initialise-database)

Problems loading foreign libraries¶

Depending on how your system is configured, clsql:connect may give a "Couldn't load foreign libraries" error. In this case, you
need to tell CLSQL where it can find these libraries, e.g.

(clsql:push-library-path "/usr/local/mysql/lib/")

The exact path will depend on your system. Note that, for some database installations these libraries may not have been installed, and you should consult the database documentation.