PART I - The program development environment
Author(s): The Ciao Development Team.This part documents the components of the basic Ciao program development environment. They include:
- ciao:
- the Ciao super-command, which invokes the toplevel, compiler, or the build system for bundle management.
- ciaosh:
- (also invoked simply as ciao) is an interactive top-level shell, similar to the one found on most Prolog systems (with some enhancements). It is embeddable, in the sense that it can be included as a library in executables.
- debugger:
- a Byrd box-type debugger, similar to the one found on most Prolog systems (also with some enhancements, such as source-level debugging). This is not a standalone application, but is rather available from ciaosh, as is done in other systems supporting the Prolog language. However, it is also embeddable, and it can be activated dynamically and conditionally while running executables.
- profiler:
- which can be used to determine call counts, times, etc. per predicate when executing a goal or an executable. It is not a standalone application but rather an engine functionality that can be accessed from the ciaosh top level or activated for a given executable.
- ciaoc:
- the standalone compiler, which creates executables without having to enter the interactive top-level.
- ciao-shell:
- an interpreter/compiler for Ciao scripts (i.e., files containing Ciao code which run without needing explicit compilation).
- Ciao emacs interface:
- a complete program development enviroment, based on GNU emacs, with syntax coloring, direct access to all the tools described above (as well as the preprocessor and the documenter), atomatic location of errors, source-level debugging, context-sensitive access to on-line help/manuals, etc. The use of this environment is very highly recommended!
The Ciao program development environment also includes ciaopp, the preprocessor, and lpdoc, the documentation generator, which are described in separate manuals.