spade-0.1.0.6: README.md

# S.P.A.D.E

S.P.A.D.E stands of Simple Programming And Debugging Environment.

It contains a simple programming language and a built-in Terminal based
IDE.

The following is a small spade program that draws a bunch of random circles
in red color, in an SDL window.

```
graphicswindow(400, 400, true)
setcolor(255, 0, 0)
for i = 1 to 100
  circle(random(10, 300), random(10, 300), random(10, 40))
endfor
drawscreen()
waitforkey()
```

The entire language and function reference is available in the IDE in an
easily searchable way. Press F1 or use the help menu to access it.

NOTE: This is still a very early version. The standard library is virtually non
existent, and those function present are the only ones that were required to write the
sample programs in the "samples" folder in this repo.

### IDE Demo
A short screen recording of SPADE in action can be seen [here](https://vimeo.com/692243011).

### Installing

#### Linux

##### Run from a portable binary.

The easiest way to run spade on Linux is to download the portable executable
from [here](https://sras.me/releases).  The latest release will be named
`spade.run`.  After downloading the required  `.run` file, make it executable
and run it.

```
chmod +x spade.run
./spade.run
```

The file is a self extraction archive containing most of the shared dependencies, so it should
hopefully work on most of the linux distros.

#### From source

##### Dependencies

To install depdendencies:

```
  apt-get install libsdl2-dev
  apt-get install libsdl2-mixer-dev
  apt-get install libtinfo-dev
```

You can download the source package '.tar.gz' file from hackage, and use cabal
or stack tool to build and install it.  After extracting the source to a
folder, running either of the following commands in the folder should build and install
it.

```
cabal build && cabal install

```

```
stack build && stack install

```

#### Building on Raspberry PI

You should be able to install this in a Raspberry Pi 3 or later iterations. The following steps appear to
work for a succesful build on a Raspberry Pi 3.

1. Install GHC version 9.0.1 following steps described https://www.haskell.org/ghc/blog/20200515-ghc-on-arm.html
2. Install `stack tool` using `apt-get install haskell-stack`
3. Increase the swap space to 2GB, disable GUI by booting into terminal mode, and then build the program using `stack build --system-ghc`.

Depending on your setup, the initial build can take a very long time, like a couple of days.


### Getting started

The program should be started by providing a file name. For example,

```
spade /tmp/temp.spd
```

If the file does not exist, it will be created on save. If it exist then
contents will loaded into the editor.

Other than this are no provisions to select or open a file from within the IDE.
The user is supposed to only work with a single file at one time.

To interpret a spade program without starting the IDE, you can use
the `run` command.

```
spade run /tmp/temp.spd
```

Will execute the program without opening the IDE.

### Reporting bugs/issues

Please use the issue tracker [here](https://bitbucket.org/sras/spade/issues).