1. All graphical output is created using GraphViz. You need to install it. Make sure dot and neato are in your path (set the $PATH environment variable if necessary). Also, if you compile it from source, make sure you install it with gts support.

2. There are several formats that you can generate a functional specification document in. Currently, the best results can be obtained in docx or LaTeX (PDF). Depending on your taste, you need appropriate software:

   1. For docx, you could of course use Microsoft Word, but there are as well.

   2. If you want to generate PDF files, using LaTeX, you need a LaTeX compiler. On Windows, we recommend . On Linux and MacOS, we recommend .

Ampersand models are written as source code files. Hence, you need a text editor in which you can do so. We recomend , which has . You could however use any text editor that you are familiar with, as long as you make sure it saves files as format.

Installing an Ampersand compiler

The following instructions presume that you are familiar with the basics of your own computer.

The easy way: Use a prebuilt executable file

The easiest way is by use of available executables. We release frequently. Have a look at . For Windows users, there is a file called ampersand.exe in the release. Put it on your disk on a location of your choice, for example /Ampersand/bin/. Make sure , so the command "ampersand" is known on the command line. That's all. Note that double-clickingampersand.exewill not work, because it is a command line tool.

Here is a way to test whether or not you have succeeded: open a command line tool (e.g. CMD on Windows), and type ampersand -v. If all is well, the version number of the Ampersand tool is output.

Now you can compile and check your Ampersand scripts. However, you are likely to want to do more with such scripts. Currently it is possible to generate functional specifications and/or functional prototypes from such scrips. You will need to install some additional software in order to do that.

Additional software for generating functional SPECIFICATIONS:

If you want to generate functional specifications from ampersand scripts, you need the following additional software (if you don't, don't bother installing them):

1. In order to generate PDF files that contain your functional specification, you need a LaTeX compiler. On Windows, we recommend . On Linux and MacOS, we recommend .

2. All graphical output is created using . You need to install it. Make sure dot and neato are in your path (set the $PATH environment variable if necessary). Also, if you compile it from source, make sure you install it with gts support.

Additional software for generating functional PROTOTYPES

If you want to generate functional prototypes from ampersand scripts, you need the following additional software (if you don't, don't bother installing them):

1. In order to run the generated prototype, you need Apache (or another web server) with SQL and PHP v 7.1 or higher. In Windows, a practical way is to install

   • You must create an account in SQL for

     localhost

The less easy way: Installing from Source

If there is no executable for your operating system, or if you prefer to build an Ampersand compiler yourself, follow these steps:

1. Install stack, the haskell tool stack.

2. use to clone the latest version of Ampersand. The code can be found at . (the master branch is our stable branch)

3. Open a command line terminal, and go to the directory that contains the file named ampersand.cabal

This will build an Ampersand-compiler named "ampersand.exe" and install it into your path.

Testing your installation

• Open a .

• Type "Ampersand --version". The expected behaviour is that Ampersand replies with the version of Ampersand. It will look something like:

  The version number is important to specify, whenever you have a question of like to report an issue. It really helps us when you add the version number, including everything between the brackets when you contact us.

Test to see if you can build your first prototype

Ampersand allows you to generate a working prototype of your ampersand model. An Ampersand prototype is a website that requires a webserver to run on and a (My)SQL database server. This chapter describes the prerequisites for getting such prototypes up, and running.

First, you should get a working script. Let's assume it is called myModel.adl and it contains valid content such as is shown here below:

Don't worry if you do not understand what everything in this script means. That isn't important for now.

If you do not have such a script, you can copy the above text, paste it in a text editor and save it. Different novice users have shown that this may present some problems. One is that in some browsers (e.g. IE), copying the text will include the line numbers. If you see your file has line numbers embedded in the text, you should get rid of them before saving it. Another one is that it may contain characters that are not displayable in the editor - some editors will turn such characters into printable ones, e.g. a question mark. If that's the case with you, you should also get rid of them. You should end up with text in a file that is as is shown above.

Then, you can generate the prototype website for the script in file myModel.adl by typing the command:

This creates a directory myModel.proto (in the current directory), that contains the prototype website. Obviously, you will need a web server and a database server to run the prototype. This is discussed at .

Usually, you would have some demands regarding particulars of the generation. For example, you may want to generate the website in a specific directory, specify a particular CSS file for this website, etc. For the complete syntax of the Ampersand executable, see the chapter about the ****

Notes: 1. Do not use Hackage to get ampersand. It does not contain all non-haskell files. (See ) 2. stack memory usage may require other applications to be terminated (e.g. on 8GB Windows systems). If stack terminates prematurely, re-invoking the command will pick-up where it stopped. 3. stack may terminate on various errors , e.g. that it doesn't have permission to access or rename files. Again, if stack terminates prematurely, re-invoking the command will pick-up where it stopped. Users have mentioned having to restart stack several times before it would finally complete building Ampersand.exe.

Footnotes

What do you need to understand?

We use a docker-platform to run your Ampersand program on virtually any computer. So go ahead and install docker if you don't already have it. You provide (once) a recipe for building (Dockerfile) and a description of the configuration (docker-compose.yml). We'll provide examples for you to adapt.

1. Your Ampersand prototype will run in a , which is a virtual machine.

2. The container is started and stopped by docker-compose, which uses a

   that is built with your Dockerfile and deployed with your docker-compose.yml file.

3. your image from your , using the command docker-compose up -d. You can verify that it runs with docker ps.

4. Access your application through your browser, using <TODO: Which URL?>

Please watch (8 minutes) to see what Docker does to bring up your Ampersand program as a web application on your own machine.

What do you need up front?

You need a computer that runs Docker and that has an internet connection. That lets you generate a Docker image from your Ampersand source code. Then run your program on Docker on localhost.

What do you do to run your Ampersand program?

First, you create a directory in which you will organize your Ampersand (.adl) files and some other stuff. We will refer to this directory as your working directory. In this working directory, make sure you have:

1. A file called Dockerfile, which contains the recipe for creating a Docker image

2. A file called docker-compose.yml, which contains the runtime configuration of the containers running your program.

3. The source code of your Ampersand program, as specified in

Then from you command line interface run:

docker-compose up -d

Sit back and watch. Don't worry, the second time around Docker downloads much less as it builds up its local image repository.

Deploying

The deployment consists of the following steps:

1. Copy your .adl-file to a working directory on your server.

2. Get two docker-files from internet by executing the following commands:

   On servers other than Linux, you may need another command than wget, but the files are the same.

Redeploying

After you deploy the first time, you may want to edit your program. Just save the results and redeploy with the command:

If you want to see which images are stored on your local computer, type

In trouble?

• Check if there is a firewall that blocks the port from internet. Make sure that port 80 is open for http-traffic.

• Check the port settings and adapt docker-compose.yml if you must use a port other than port 80.

• Use a recent browser. We have developed Ampersand on FireFox and tested it on FireFox and Chrome, so you should be fine with one of these two.

Ampersand is great for rapid prototyping. We advise you to do that on the web. But sometimes you want to run your prototypes on your own computer(s). For different purposes there are different ways of doing that. This chapter shows you how.

How to edit Ampersand scripts

You can use any text editor to create Ampersand scripts. However, for those that use the editor, there is language support. All you have to do is search for the vscode extension "Ampersand (ADL) language support" and install it, and then choose the coloring theme called "Ampersand".