Help needed to get CHSM binary

I would REALLY like to evaluate CHSM: Concurrent Hierarchical Finite State
Machine, but despite my best efforts I cannot build this from source. I'm a
user, not a developer. The author has made it pretty clear he won't provide
a binary, so how/where do I get one? I don't know where to even ask the
question as the sourceforge project forums seem empty. Can anybody advise
how tp get a binary for Windows ? I only want to draw statecharts, not
generate code from them.

Alternatively, blow by blow instructions on how to build from scratch on
Vista would be most useful, but sounds complicated.

Marc Hillman escreveu:
> I would REALLY like to evaluate CHSM: Concurrent Hierarchical Finite
> State Machine, but despite my best efforts I cannot build this from
> source. I'm a user, not a developer. The author has made it pretty clear
> he won't provide a binary, so how/where do I get one? I don't know where
> to even ask the question as the sourceforge project forums seem empty.
> Can anybody advise how tp get a binary for Windows ? I only want to draw
> statecharts, not generate code from them.

If this is your goal, then you're on the wrong path with CHSM. It is a
textual language system, not a graphical environment.


--
Cesar Rabak
GNU/Linux User 52247.
Get counted: http://counter.li.org/

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:38:16 +1100, "Marc Hillman"
<> wrote:

>I would REALLY like to evaluate CHSM: Concurrent Hierarchical Finite State
>Machine, but despite my best efforts I cannot build this from source. I'm a
>user, not a developer. The author has made it pretty clear he won't provide
>a binary, so how/where do I get one? I don't know where to even ask the
>question as the sourceforge project forums seem empty. Can anybody advise
>how tp get a binary for Windows ? I only want to draw statecharts, not
>generate code from them.
>
>Alternatively, blow by blow instructions on how to build from scratch on
>Vista would be most useful, but sounds complicated.

Repurpose an older MS Windows box as a Linux platform?

Or, one option that may lead to a native MS Windows binary executable
would be to install the MinGW and MSys packages. These are designed to
provide a minimal GNU environment within Windows that can be used to go
through the usual build steps: ./configure, make, and make install.

In theory, all that should be required would be to download and build
the prerequisites and then the final target. In practice, it's rarely
that straightforward but who knows, you might get lucky! ;-)

At which point you can volunteer to be the maintainer of the Windows
binary distributions...

If you do go the MinGW + MSys route, install MinGW first (take the
defaults but don't install the MinGW version of make) and then install
MSys. Even if CHSM doesn't build properly, you'll still end up with a
useful set of utilities and a much more powerful command line shell than
Windows provides.

--
Rich Webb Norfolk, VA

Tim Wescott wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:30:31 -0400, Rich Webb wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:38:16 +1100, "Marc Hillman"
>> <> wrote:
>>
>>> I would REALLY like to evaluate CHSM: Concurrent Hierarchical Finite
>>> State Machine, but despite my best efforts I cannot build this from
>>> source. I'm a user, not a developer. The author has made it pretty clear
>>> he won't provide a binary, so how/where do I get one? I don't know where
>>> to even ask the question as the sourceforge project forums seem empty.
>>> Can anybody advise how tp get a binary for Windows ? I only want to draw
>>> statecharts, not generate code from them.
>>>
>>> Alternatively, blow by blow instructions on how to build from scratch on
>>> Vista would be most useful, but sounds complicated.
>> Repurpose an older MS Windows box as a Linux platform?
>>
>> Or, one option that may lead to a native MS Windows binary executable
>> would be to install the MinGW and MSys packages. These are designed to
>> provide a minimal GNU environment within Windows that can be used to go
>> through the usual build steps: ./configure, make, and make install.
>>
>> In theory, all that should be required would be to download and build
>> the prerequisites and then the final target. In practice, it's rarely
>> that straightforward but who knows, you might get lucky! ;-)
>>
>> At which point you can volunteer to be the maintainer of the Windows
>> binary distributions...
>>
>> If you do go the MinGW + MSys route, install MinGW first (take the
>> defaults but don't install the MinGW version of make) and then install
>> MSys. Even if CHSM doesn't build properly, you'll still end up with a
>> useful set of utilities and a much more powerful command line shell than
>> Windows provides.
>
> Somewhere out there is a Linux distro that runs under Windows. _Not_
> Cygwin -- it's a 'real Linux' whose HAL talks to Windows instead of
> hardware.
>

Are you thinking of coLinux? If so, coLinux is not a distribution but a
modification of the Linux kernel so that it talks to Windows at a low
level, rather than to the hardware. You can get hard disk image files
with various pre-installed distributions. This is perhaps the
"lightest" way to run Linux on a windows machine (in terms of ram and
processor overhead). However, it is significantly easier to use
something like VirtualBox (a free download) and install a Linux virtual
machine.

> And there's Cygwin, of course.
>

Cygwin occupies a middle ground between MinGW + MSys, and a virtual
machine. For my usage, it is getting squeezed out. It used to be
necessary to use cygwin if you wanted a windows gcc binary (and
especially if you wanted to build one yourself, rather than just use a
pre-built binary). But improvements to MinGW, additional utilities in
MSys, and mingw-friendly changes to gcc source code have made
cygwin-less gcc binaries the norm. Similarly, virtual machines used to
involve significant costs (for the virtualisation software, and for the
extra ram), and run poorly. With modern hardware, virtual machines are
cheap and easy.

Thank you very much for that insight. It has saved me a lot of wasted time
and energy - but it leaves me back at square one.

Still looking for a graphical Harel statechart tool that supports concurrent
states. Must be free, but doesn't have to be open source.

"Cesar Rabak" <> wrote in message
news:hc4a6o$kjr$...
> Marc Hillman escreveu:
>> I would REALLY like to evaluate CHSM: Concurrent Hierarchical Finite
>> State Machine, but despite my best efforts I cannot build this from
>> source. I'm a user, not a developer. The author has made it pretty clear
>> he won't provide a binary, so how/where do I get one? I don't know where
>> to even ask the question as the sourceforge project forums seem empty.
>> Can anybody advise how tp get a binary for Windows ? I only want to draw
>> statecharts, not generate code from them.
>
> If this is your goal, then you're on the wrong path with CHSM. It is a
> textual language system, not a graphical environment.
>
>
> --
> Cesar Rabak
> GNU/Linux User 52247.
> Get counted: http://counter.li.org/

On Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:07:59 +1100, "Marc Hillman"
<> wrote:

>"Cesar Rabak" <> wrote in message
>news:hc4a6o$kjr$...
>> Marc Hillman escreveu:
>>> I would REALLY like to evaluate CHSM: Concurrent Hierarchical Finite
>>> State Machine, but despite my best efforts I cannot build this from
>>> source. I'm a user, not a developer. The author has made it pretty clear
>>> he won't provide a binary, so how/where do I get one? I don't know where
>>> to even ask the question as the sourceforge project forums seem empty.
>>> Can anybody advise how tp get a binary for Windows ? I only want to draw
>>> statecharts, not generate code from them.
>>
>> If this is your goal, then you're on the wrong path with CHSM. It is a
>> textual language system, not a graphical environment.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Cesar Rabak
>> GNU/Linux User 52247.
>> Get counted: http://counter.li.org/


>Thank you very much for that insight. It has saved me a lot of wasted time
>and energy - but it leaves me back at square one.
>
>Still looking for a graphical Harel statechart tool that supports concurrent
>states. Must be free, but doesn't have to be open source.

Try http://qfsm.sourceforge.net/download.html

Windows binary available. Can export the state diagram in a nice
vector SVG format.

Regards
Anton Erasmus