SARL Agent Programming Language

SARL is a general-purpose agent-oriented language, www.sarl.io.

SARL aims at providing the fundamental abstractions for dealing with concurrency, distribution, interaction, decentralization, reactivity, autonomy and dynamic reconfiguration. These high-level features are now considered as the major requirements for an easy and practical implementation of modern complex software applications. We are convinced that the agent-oriented paradigm holds the keys to effectively meet this challenge.

Considering the variety of existing approaches and meta-models in the field of agent-oriented engineering and more generally multi-agent systems, our approach remains as generic as possible and highly extensible to easily integrate new concepts and features. The language is platform- and architecture-independent.

However, we provide a first set of tools to support its execution based on the new version 2.0 of the Janus (see www.janusproject.io) platform, but it can be linked with other existing agent platforms and frameworks.

Build Status
Linux [1] and OSX [2]
Windows [3]

Table of Contents

• 1. Requirements
• 2. Using SARL
  • 2.1. Recommendations
  • 2.2. Use the stable version with Maven
  • 2.3. Use of the development version with Maven
  • 2.4. Compile SARL code with Maven
  • 2.5. Syntax highlighting with other tools
• 3. P2 Repository
• 4. Issues
• 5. Contributions
• 6. Authors and Contributors
• 7. License of SARL
• 8. Success Stories

1. Requirements

• Java Development Toolkit (JDK) 1.8.

• You may encountering issues if your are using Java 1.9 with SARL.

2. Using SARL

2.1. Recommendations

For making your experience with SARL the best, we recommend you:

• to enable the assertions at development time (with the -ea command line option).

2.2. Use the stable version with Maven

The lastest stable version of SARL is available on Maven Central. Consequently, you could directly include the SARL module into the Maven dependencies of your project:

	...
	<dependency>
	  <groupId>io.sarl.maven</groupId>
	  <artifactId>io.sarl.maven.sdk</artifactId>
	  <version>0.7.0</version>
	</dependency>
	...

Please, replace Version 0.7.0 in the previous snipset by the number of the version you want to use.

2.3. Use of the development version with Maven

New features, enhancements and bug fixes are available in the SNAPSHOT (development) version of SARL. For using this version, you must add the Maven Repository Server of SARL in your pom file:

	...
	<dependencies>
	  <dependency>
	    <groupId>io.sarl.maven</groupId>
	    <artifactId>io.sarl.maven.sdk</artifactId>
	    <version>0.8.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
	  </dependency>
	<dependencies>
	...
	<repositories>
	  <repository>
	    <id>io.sarl-maven</id>
	    <name>SARL Snapshots</name>
	    <url>http://maven.sarl.io/</url>
	  </repository>
	</repositories>
	<pluginRepositories>
    	  <pluginRepository>
	    <id>io.sarl-maven</id>
	    <name>SARL Snapshots</name>
	    <url>http://maven.sarl.io/</url>
	    <snapshots>
	      <enabled>true</enabled>
	    </snapshots>
	  </pluginRepository>
	</pluginRepositories>
	...

2.4. Compile SARL code with Maven

For compiling SARL source files with Maven, you should use the provided plugin: sarl-maven-plugin. It invokes the SARL and Java compilers with a simpler interface than the standard Xtext maven plugin. For using the sarl-maven-plugin, you should add in your pom file:

	...
	<build>
	  <plugins>
	    <plugin>
	      <groupId>io.sarl.maven</groupId>
	      <artifactId>sarl-maven-plugin</artifactId>
	      <version>0.7.0</version>
	      <extensions>true</extensions>
	      <configuration>
	        <source>1.8</source>
	        <target>1.8</target>
	        <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
	      </configuration>
	    </plugin>
	    ...
	  </plugins>
	  ...
	</build>
	...

Please, replace Version 0.7.0 in the previous snipset by the number of the version you want to use.

Caution

Do not forget to set the extensions flag to true.

2.5. Syntax highlighting with other tools

Several style specifications are provided for syntax highlighting in third party tools. Style specifications are provided for:

• Atom (TextMate language definition)

• GNU source-highlight

• Google Prettify

• Gtk source view (including gedit)

• LaTeX:

  • LaTeX listing: monochrom, color

  • LaTeX Beamer

• Pygments

• Sublime Text (TextMate language definition)

• TextMate (or plist definition)

• Vim

3. P2 Repository

A P2 repository is set up and accesible at the address: updates.sarl.io.

4. Issues

Issues related to SARL are tracked on GitHub You must use this issue tracker to report and follow your issues.

Additionally, you could have a look on the SARL developers' working plan on Huboard.

5. Contributions

Any contribution to the SARL is welcome. Please read the guidelines for contributors.

6. Authors and Contributors

• Antoine Bartuccio, fireworks and Sierpinski fractal examples.

• Greg Bowering, fixes for localization support within the fireworks example.

• Mohamed Ezzat, code cleaning and optimization.

• James Foster, documentation contributor.

• Stéphane GALLAND, founder, original and active author.

• Nicolas GAUD, founder, original and active author.

• Jeremie JOST, documentation contributor.

• Thomas PIOTROWSKI, maven configuration.

• Sebastian RODRIGUEZ, founder, original and active author.

7. License of SARL

SARL is distributed under the Apache v2 license, and is copyrigthed to the original authors and the other authors, as expressed in the NOTICE.

8. Success Stories

The following projects have sucessfully used SARL:

• Jaak Simulation Library

• SARL Elevator Simulator Controller

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1. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server Edition 64 bit

2. OSX 10.12 and Xcode 8.2

3. Visual Studio 2015