It is currently in beta and some manual steps are needed to download, install and setup the necessary programs.
The screenshots below are from Eclipse 3.5 on Windows Vista but both SICStus and Eclipse looks almost the same on other platforms, such as Linux and Mac OS X, and the same or similar steps should be performed on all platforms. Note that current releases of SPIDER requires Eclipse 3.7 or later.
Full-size versions of the screenshots will open in a separate window when the thumbnail is clicked. When you have completed the installation you can continue with the Getting Started link at the overview page.
Installing SICStus is the same as in previous releases. SPIDER tend to work best with the latest version of SICStus.
Eclipse does not come with an installer. Instead you need to manually extract the files and, on some platforms, configure Eclipse so it finds the correct version of Java.
You should install a recent version of Sun/Oracle Java.
Installing Eclipse is done by just extracting the Eclipse zip archive (with a working zip utility, see Windows note above). On Linux you may have to perform some additional steps, see Linux note above.
This is done by telling Eclipse about the SPIDER update site, http://www.sics.se/sicstus/update/ (you can not browse that page, it is not for humans). See below for details.
The final step in setting up SPIDER is to tell it about the location of the SICStus Prolog binaries and libraries.
Note: This step, and re-creating the Prolog Reference Project, should be repeated every time you update SICStus Prolog. See the next item.
We expect to release new versions of SPIDER more often than of SICStus Prolog itself. For this reason it is a good idea to let Eclipse check for updates occasionally.
You can check for new versions of SPIDER by selecting "Check for Updates" in the Help menu. It is also possible to tell Eclipse to check for updates automatically.
Every time you install a new version of SICStus Prolog you should delete the Reference Project and then set up paths to SICStus Prolog and its libraries, as described in Setting up the SICStus IDE.
Eclipse comes in many configurations. We use "Eclipse Classic" which has support for developing Java programs.
In particular, you can not use the zip file support that comes with Windows. Instead you need to install and use a third-party program for unzipping the Eclipse zip archive. We use 7-zip.
We recommend Eclipse version 3.7 (or some later 3.7.x) which was released in 2011. It can be downloaded from The Eclipse Site. Currently the miminum requirement is Eclipse version 3.6.
After downloading do not open the downloaded zip-file just yet. Instead (on Windows) you should first "unblock" the zip file (right click the file, select Properties, click the Unblock button, if present. See the screenshot below.).
You may want to create a shortcut on the desktop so that you can more easily start Eclipse, as shown in this screenshot.
Eclipse will ask about a location for a workspace folder. This is where Eclipse stores all files it creates. You can accept the default.
Eclipse has a concept of "Update Site" which is a web location with special contents.
The update site for SPIDER is http://www.sics.se/sicstus/update/. Note that this update site does not contain any human readable contents.
Select the "Install New Software" menu item from the Eclipse Help menu.
Then fill in the update site address (http://www.sics.se/sicstus/update/) and click the Add button, as shown in the screenshot.
You can give the update site a name, e.g. SICStus Prolog IDE.
Eclipse should now present a list of the features available at the update site.
NOTE: You may see the text There are no categorized items, when you try to download SPIDER. In this case uncheck the “Group items by category” checkbox in the Available software dialog.
Select the SICStus IDE Feature and click Next. Accept the license terms and click Finish.
Eclipse may warn about “… unsigned content.”, this can safely be ignored in this case.
Allow Eclipse to restart itself.
There should now be a Prolog-specific entry on the Eclipse Welcome Page (you can open the Welcome Page from the Help menu).
The Eclipse help-system can sometimes trigger the firewall. It is OK to select "Keep blocking" since it only needs to use network connections between programs on the same machine.
Eclipse has a help feature called "Cheat Sheets". These are interactive step-by-step instructions for performing a particular tasks. In many cases the cheat sheet will be able to perform all or parts of a procedure by just clicking on the Click to perform link in the cheat sheet.
You will use a Cheat Sheet for setting up the SICStus IDE.
Open the list of available cheat sheets from the Help menu.
Select the cheat sheet "Initial set up of paths to installed SICStus Prolog" from the "SICStus Prolog" category.
The cheat sheet should now open. Start the cheat sheet by pressing the "Click to Begin" link.
The first step is to modify the preferences in order to tell Eclipse about the location of the SICStus program. The "Click to perform" link can open the SICStus Prolog preference page for you. You then need to use the Browse button to navigate to the SICStus Prolog executable (sicstus.exe on Windows, sicstus on other platforms).
When you dismiss the Preferences dialog the cheat sheet should automatically process to the next step. If not, press the "Click when complete" link.
The second step is to create a Reference Project, that is a project that will refer to all the SICStus Prolog library files. The "Click to perform" link can perform this step automatically.
Once the Reference Project is created the set-up and installation of SPIDER is complete.
Sometimes the Cheat Sheet gets obscured. In this case you can bring to the front by clicking on its tab.
Setup of SPIDER is now complete.
Finally, an optional step, "Create a simple project", will bring up a new Cheat Sheet for creating a simple Hello World program.