Tools

This page contains information about the tools and software used in the course. See the Resources section of this site for additional information.

You can use those tools on your own computers or on the machines in the DIVMS labs. You can log in the lab machines either

• directly, by using one of the desktop computers in 301MLH, or
• remotely, by connecting to the CS Department's FastX server; see the CLAS help pages for additional information.

Alloy Analyzer

Installing the Analyzer

You can download the Alloy Analyzer to your own computer or to those in the lab. The latest release (Alloytools 6.*.*) is available here as a jar file (for Windows or Linux) and as a MacOS app.

The easiest way to install the tool in Linux or Windows is simply to download the latest jar file onto your Desktop and then launch it either by double clicking on its icon (Windows or Mac) or right-clicking the icon and then choosing "Open With java" (Linux).

Note 1: Mac users may want to install the Mac OS native version of the analyzer (alloy.dmg).

Note 2: On Linux, Java might complain about not having enough space for the object heap. In that case, you will need to launch the Alloy Analyzer from a terminal window.

1. Open a terminal and move to the subdirectory that contains the file org.alloytools.alloy.dist.jar.
2. At the terminal's prompt, type:
   

   java -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -jar org.alloytools.alloy.dist.jar &

Using the Analyzer

Click on the Help menu in the Analyzer's top bar for a quick guide on how to use the tool.

Alloy in VS Code

Visual Studio Code is an open source modern IDE available for all major operating systems. VS Code has an excellent Alloy extension that comes with its own copy of the Alloy Analyzer. The extension is a breeze to install and just as easy to use.

Note: VS Code is preinstalled on the FastX remote server. You can access it from the Applications | Computer Science menu of the desktop and install your own extensions.

Dafny

Installing Dafny

Although the Dafny verifier is available as a stand-alone, command-line tool, it is best used as an extension of VS Code, which we highly recommend. See the extension's webpage for installation and usage instructions.

Note: On Linux and MacOs you will need to have a separate installation of .NET 6 too. That is easy to do on your computer by downloading the installer.

Note: VS Code is preinstalled on the FastX remote server. You can access it from the Applications | Computer Science menu of the desktop. You can install the Dafny extension yourself as in the instructions above but without having to install .NET since it is already installed. The path to the .NET executable is /usr/bin/dotnet .