Installation

There is a basic Assimilator installation for general usage that starts the core platform services and runs and manages services. There is the development environment installation. A basic cross platform installation exists. Platform specific installers will be developed over time. Also instructions for downloading the project source used in a development environment is described here.

Installers

Installer files are located at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174753.

Platform Independent Installer

Download the platform independent installer. A Java installation must exist on the machine for a platform independent installer to be run. The installation is started using:

java -jar assimilator-install.jar

The installation location should preferably be referred to without using spaces in the path name. This may cause errors. It is recommended that all the packs be installed. Only the Assimilator core pack is required.

Core - Includes code for the essential core platform services.
Substrates - Includes capabilities to run and use Java Spaces and Service Control Adapters. This pack is required to run some of the examples.
QA - This is the test harness used to test Assimilator service code and is not required for a basic non-developer install.
Utilities - Includes utility applications to help visually manage Assimilator services.
Tools - Includes a service analyzer tool for diagnosing executing services.
Documentation - Includes all the Assimilator documentation including the manual, publications and design information.

Source Download

Assimilator code is hosted at SourceForge in a Subversion (SVN) repository. SVN provides the means to store not only the current version of a piece of source code, but a record of all changes (and who made those changes) that have occurred to that source code. Detailed information about using SVN with code hosted at SourceForge can be found at SourceForge.net: Subversion.

Anyone wishing to acquire the Assimilator files may retrieve the very latest (not necessarily ready for release) source code from SVN. The Project Assimilator files include source code, libraries, examples and support documentation. An SVN client is required to retrieve the software from the repository. The following are supported SVN clients:

TortoiseSVN 1.2.6 and above, for Microsoft Windows, hosted on SourceForge.net. TortoiseSVN configuration is documented here.
The official SVN client, included in most Linux and BSD distributions; available for Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and Windows. The official SVN client configuration is documented here.

SVN uses a URL to access project files. URLs for SourceForge.net projects are consistent and displayed on the project's SVN pages. For Assimilator the URL looks like:
https://assimilator.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/assimilator

The two most common commands used to access the current file versions include:

Checkout: svn co https://assimilator.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/assimilator/trunk
Update: svn update

Checkout creates the local SVN file structure on the machine executing the command, in the directory where the command was executed. Update retrieves only the files updated in the repository which are newer than the local versions and replaces the older local files.

Developers are certainly welcome. Approved contributors will be granted access to the project repository by current project administrators.