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virtual
machine

The virtual machine is required to execute Alice applications. It takes the URL of the application's root component and evaluates it.

alicerun <url> <args> ...

Executes the application given by <url>, denoting a compiled component. The component is located, loaded and evaluated using the root component manager.

The application can access the remaining command line arguments via the CommandLine library structure. To terminate an application, the OS.Process.terminate function must be invoked. The virtual machine will not be terminated automatically, even if no live threads are left.

The virtual machine is parameterized by the following environment variables:

ALICE_HOME

specifies the directory where Alice is installed. If not set, under Unix or started from a Windows Cygwin shell, alicerun guesses its name by looking in the following directories, in that order:

1. /usr/share/alice, which is the default installation path on some Unix variants
2. %PROGRAMFILES%/Alice, which is the default installation path on Windows
3. The parent directory of the directory in which alicerun resides.

If not set, under Windows started from a CMD console, alicerun guesses the installation directory to be %PROGRAMFILES%\Alice.

ALICE_LOAD_PREFIX

ALICE_LOAD_SUFFIX

specify resolving methods to use when trying to access components. Components are resolved with the following methods, in order:

1. If ALICE_LOAD_PREFIX is set, its methods are tried before any of the following.
2. The URL is tried below the .alice/cache directory in the user's home directory, in a cache-style structure.
3. The URL is tried with the platform's default component extension appended, which is .alc.
4. If that fails, and ALICE_LOAD_SUFFIX is set, its methods are tried at this point.

The syntax for specifying custom resolving methods is defined by the library's Resolver.Handler structure.

ALICE_TRACE_BOOT_LINKER

if set (its value does not matter), causes trace messages to be printed on standard error about linking Alice components required to boot the machine.

ALICE_JIT_MODE

if set to 0, disables the run-time compiler. If set to 1, the native code run-time compiler for x86 processors is used. If set to 2, the byte code run-time compiler is used. By default, the mode is 1 for x86 processors and 2 for other processors like PowerPC and AMD64.