MyroC Installation and Comments for Windows 10 Materials to Support a C-based Course with Scribbler 2 Robots

Installing MyroC.a

This page organizes instructions and notes for the installation of version
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of the MyroC package on Windows 10. Overall, this installation involves the following packages:

Overview

The C Programming Language was first developed in the 1970s to support software development by computing professionals at AT&T Bell Laboratories. These cutting-edge computer scientists often worked within an operating system called Unix, and both C and Unix utilize several common perspectives regarding programming and application development.

Brief History

Over the years, C has progressed substantially, with a long series of evolving national and international standards.

• C89: standardization started in 1983 by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), with a final version completed and ratified in 1989. Historically, this is sometimes called ANSI C.
• C90: standardization by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) largely followed C89, with modest formatting changes.
• C95: The ISO published an extension of ANSI-C in 1995. Modest amendments were published in 1994 and 1996.
• C99: With the need for C to fit into an international framework, several substantial extensions were added in 1999, first by ANSI and then the ISO.
• C11 and C18: The ISO made further refinements and additions in 2011 and 2018.

An important perspective throughout this development is that the C language began as a tool to help meet specific technical needs, but now is widely used internationally to support a wide range of technical applications. Conceptually, C relies on the programmer to supervise many low-level tasks, and this allows C programs to run quickly, with little overhead.

The C Programming Language and Windows 10

With its history, the C Programming Language was developed with some assumptions regarding a computer's operating system. In today's environment, such an environment largely is consistent with features built into Linux and Mac OS X systems. However, Windows operating systems, including Windows 10, come with a somewhat different model of computation and different basic features. As a result, computers based on Linux or Mac OS X can be utilize C programs directly—relevant run-time environments for C typically are available with little work when a machine runs either Linux or Mac OS X. For Windows operating systems, however, there is both bad news and good news:

• The Bad News: Windows operating systems, including Windows 10, do not have built-in capabilities designed specifically for programming with C.

• The Good News: Windows operating systems, including Windows 10, provide full capabilities for general computing, and various packages and environments are available for Windows 10 to enable programmers to work directly with C.

Key Observation when using MSYS2 on Windows

The process of installing MSYS2 actually establishes three different environments for working with programs—all found in the msys2 directory that you set up. (If you followed the instructions given here, this directory would be in C:msys> or msys64.)

In particular, the base MSYS2 folder contains three different shells (analogous to the bash shell, C shell, or z shell on Linux or Mac computers). Use one of these shells as your terminal window when working with various programming interactions and languages:

• Use mingw32.exe for running programs in a 32-bit hardware environment.
• Use mingw64.exe for running programs in a 64-bit hardware environment.
• Use msys2.exe for running programs in a reasonably generic environment.

eSpeak [Jonathan Duddington (admin)]

eSpeak is a speech synthesizer package that allows the computer to read text that it is given. This capability turns out to be quite useful when testing programs. (When running a program, espeak allows the program to say what it is doing, so the programmer can watch that the robot is doing the right activity—without having to consult the code to determine what is supposed to happen next.)

To install eSpeak

1. Download the setup_espeak-1.48.04.exe executable file for Windows from eSpeak

   • Click on the above link
   • The file may be placed in any convenient directory (Downloads is fine).
   • .The download is an executable program that runs a "Setup Wizard"

2. Run the setup_espeak-1.48.04.exe program, to start an "eSpeak Setup Wizard".

   • To get started, personally, within msys2, I moved to the directory containing this program, and I typed:

        ./setup_espeak-1.48.04.exe
     

   • After the welcome page, the wizard asks what folder should be used to install eSpeak. Although the default could be used, C:\eSpeak is suggested, in order to be consistent with the choices to be made for the MyroC package.

     Whatever you decide, be sure to record the location in your notes, as you will need this information later for the MyroC/eSpeakPackage installation.

   • eSpeak comes with a separate app that allows you to type text and hear it spoken according to several parameters.

     • Numerous language accents are available. For English, two options are British English (en) and American English (en-us).
     • Seven variations of male voices are provided (+m1, ..., +m7), and five female voice variations (+f1, ..., +f5).

     A full voice specification combines a language and a gender specification, such as en+m1 and en-us+f5.

     In addition to the default option, you might choose four combinations of language and gender. (You will be able to experiment with various combinations shortly—as part of testing the installation of this package.

   • Windows 10 includes a "Start Up" menu to ease finding user applications. This menu oversees the inclusion of eSpeak on this "Start Up" menu. The default will be the directory specified in the first step of this Wizard process—feel free to accept this default.

   • Finally, review the earlier choices for this Wizard and click "Install", and then click "FINISH".

3. You can test that the installation of the basic eSpeak code has been installed properly in two ways.

   1. The espeak package comes with an application, called TTSAppp.exe. You can run this in either of two ways.

      • Go to the computer's "Quick Start" menu, click on the "espeak" entry, and then on "TTSApp.ext". After typing text into the main box, click "speak" to hear the synthesized voice. Change the "voice" option to hear each of the voice combinations you specified in the previous step of these instructions.
      • In the msys2 command_line interface, use the cd command to move to the directory where you specified espeak should be installed. For example, if you followed the suggestions above, you might type

                    cd C:/espeak
                    ./TTSApp.exe
                  

   2. The espeak package comes as a stand-alone program, called espeak.

      • To run this program, go to the directory where you installed the espeak package, then move to the command_line subdirectory, and use the espeak command:

                  cd C:/espeak
                  cd command_ line
                  ./espeak.exe
                

        When this program is running, type in text, and the program will speak the text to you, line at a time.

      • As a variation, you can specify voice combinations by specifying a -v option. For example, considering the voice combinations mentioned above, one could type:

                ./espeak.exe -v en+m1
                ./espeak.exe -v en-us+f5
              

Notes:

• If you would like to experiment with different languages and voices, you could run the installer as many times as you would like, changing the language and voice options each time.
• Although certainly not required, if you experiment with different voice combinations, you might record your preferences for male- and female-sounding options, as you will be able to make some adjustments in the MyroC/eSpeakPackage in the steps that follow.

eSpeakPackage

The eSpeakPackage, distributed as part of MyroC, provides a C interface that allows a programmer to specify text to eSpeak within a program. Thus, a single C program will be able to control a robot and generate speech through the synthesizer at the same time.

To get started, you will need a base directory for downloading and installing the eSpeak and MyroC packages. For example, you might create a directory MyroCPackage for your work.

1. In a terminal window, move to the top of your MSys2 file structure, create a MyroCPackage directory, and move to it.

   cd                  # go to the MyroC home first
   mkdir MyroCPackage  # create a base directory
   cd MyroCPackage     # move to the base directory for MyroC installation
   

2. Download the compressed archive file, MyroC.a.tgz to your created base directory

   • If the computer places the file in your Downloads directory, use Window's File Explorer to move the file to your created base directory (likely in the C: drive).

3. Although the original file, MyroC.a.tgz, is a compressed archive file, the Windows environment may or may not decompress the file automatically during download.
   Depending upon the file extension of the downloaded file, only one of the following options will apply.

   • If the downloaded file appears with a .tgz extension, then decompress the file and expand the archive with the command:

     tar -xzvf MyroC.a.tgz

   • If the downloaded file appears with a .tar extension, then file has already been decompressed. Expand the .tar file with the command:

     tar -xvf MyroC.a.tar

   Note:

   • When using the tar command, you may get a final message:

             tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
           

     If this message appears, scroll thorugh the listing of files that tar has unpacked. Upacking the file .../latex/index.pdf likely will create an error message related to creating a "symlink to 'refman.pdf'". As it turns out, Windows 10 does not support symbolic links. Thus, this problem is expected and should not impact later work with MyroC. If this is the only reported error reported, then unpacking MyroC.3.3a likely has worked without meaningful trouble, and you can proceed.

Following this extraction, the following files and directories should be found in a new MyroC.a subdirectory.

• README.txt: a file with a high-level overview of the MyroC package
• License.txt: a summary of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License under which all MyroC software is distributed.
• eSpeak: a directory of implementation-related files for the eSpeak package, version 3.0
• eSpeak-documentation: a directory containing documentation for the eSpeak package, in html format
• MyroC.3.3a: a directory of implementation-related files for the MyroC package, version 3.3a
• MyroC-documentation: documentation for the MyroC package, in both html and latex formats
• test-programs: several C programs to aid testing of the MyroC program

All materials for the eSpeakPackage are (not surprisingly) located in the eSpeak directory.

4. Move from the general MyroCPackage directory to its eSpeak subdirectory.:

   cd eSpeak
     

The internal algorithms and code for the eSpeakPacakge are quite different on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows 10. Thus, the downloading and decompression process for the MyroCPackage creates four subdirectories for the eSpeakPackage:

• eSpeakPackage-linux.3.0: a directory containing the C-based infrastructure that allows the use of the eSpeak speech synthesizer within a Linux framework, together with several test programs
• eSpeakPackage-mac.3.0: a directory for use in a Macintosh environment, containing the C-based infrastructure that allows the use of the eSpeak speech synthesizer, together with several test programs
• eSpeakPackage-windows.3.0: a directory for use in a Windows 10 environment, containing the C-based infrastructure that allows the use of the eSpeak speech synthesizer, together with several test programs
• eSpeak-test-programs: several programs and supporting materials for verifying when the eSpeakPackage has been installed properly. (Note that eSpeakExample1.c works directly with just the eSpeakPackage. The other C programs, however, utilize both the eSpeakPackage and MyroC, so they cannot be used until both of these elements have been installed.)

5. Assuming a Windows environment, move from the main base directory to the new eSpeakPackage-windows.3.0  subdirectory. Then list the contents of the eSpeak subdirectory:

   cd eSpeakPackage-windows.3.0 
   ls
   

   The listing includes the following files:

   • eSpeakPackage.h: the header file for C programs calling the functions for eSpeak
   • eSpeakPackage-windows.c: the eSpeakPackage implementation code for use in the Windows 10 environment
   • Makefile-windows-apps: a file, used with the make utility, to compile application programs that utilized the eSpeakPackage
   • Makefile-windows-installation-espeak: a file, used with the make utility, to compile and install the eSpeakPackage
   • eSpeakTest.c, eSpeakExample1.c, eSpeakExample2.c: applications for use in testing the eSpeakPackage and its installation.
     (Note: eSpeakTest.c and eSpeakExmaple1.c test the eSpeakPackage directly. eSpeakExample2.c requires the installation of both the eSpeakPackage and MyroC.)

6. Compile and install the relevant framework for compiling and running eSpeak on a Windows computer by using the make:command with the file Makefile-windows-installation-espeak:

   make -f Makefile-windows-installation-espeak install/eSpeak
   

Notes:

• The file Makefile-windows-installation-espeak assumes that the eSpeak program (from Jonathan Duddington) was installed in C:\eSpeak. If this is not the location chosen when installing eSpeak from Duddington, then edit the Makefile-windows-installation-espeak file to indicate the correct place.
• If the "make" command generates an error message, "operation now allowed", try running this command as the computer's administrator:

  sudo make -f Makefile-windows-installation-espeak install/eSpeak
  

• This installation places materials in directories /usr/local/include and /usr/local/bin If the "make" and "sudo make" commands generate the message, "no such file or directory", then the above directories may not exist.
  • Check that directories called /usr/local/include and /usr/local/bin exist:

    ls /usr/local/include
    ls /usr/local/bin
    

  • If one or both of these listing commands yields nothing, then the corresponding directory will need to be created:

    mkdir /usr/local/include
    mkdir /sur/local/bin
    

Testing the eSpeak and eSpeakPackage download and installation

• After compiling the eSpeakPackage (step 4), programs eSpeakTest.c and eSpeakExample1.c can be compiled and run with the make command and the application version of Makefile:

  make -f Makefile-windows-apps eSpeakTest
  ./eSpeakTest
  make -f Makefile-windows-apps eSpeakExample1
  ./eSpeakExample1
  

• Note that the eSpeakExample1.c program provided in this eSpeakPackage distribution will not compile correctly until the MyroC package already is installed.

MyroC.a

Installation of the MyroC package follows a process similar to what has been described for the eSpeakPackage—using the same MyroC download that was used for installing the eSpeakPackage.

1. From your base directory for the MyroCPackage, go to the MyroC subdirectory for this release:

   cd              # go home first, since earlier commands reference various directories
   cd MyroCPackage # the base directory for this installation
   cd MyroC.a   # the subrelease subdirectory
   

2. As with the eSpeak installation, compile and install the MyroC package in system directories using Makefile-windows-installation-myroc as the relevant framework for compiling and installing the MyroC package:

   Compile and install the MyroC package in system directories:

   make -f Makefile-windows-installation-myroc install/MyroC
   

Note: As with the eSpeakPackage installation, if you encounter an error message, "operation not allowed," when running the make command, you should try

     sudo make -f Makefile-windows-installation install/MyroC

This command will require you to type your password to confirm your intention to perform this command.

Testing and Running MyroC Programs

Note about Printing

Often, the output of a printf statement will not appear until late in program execution—perhaps just before the program terminates. To solve this problem, add the statement fflush(stdout); after each printf statement.

On to Running Test Programs

Several test programs are available in the test-programs subdirectory of the base directory.

Preliminary Step: Using MyroC with Scribbler 2 robots requires setting up Bluetooth so the workstation/laptop and robot(s) are properly paired. See Bluetooth Setup for Windows 10 Workstations/Laptops for details — before trying to run test programs.

Compiling MyroC programs requires use of numerous compilation flags, compiling normally uses a Makefile. As with installation, compilation flags must be tailored to the Windows environment.

1. Move to the MyroCPackage directory that you created earlier, and then move to its test-programs subdirectory.

2. From the MyroC.3.3 directory, move to the test-programs subdirectory.

   cd
   cd MyroCPackage
   cd test-programs
   

3. In the test-programs subdirectory, use the make command with the Makefile-windows-apps file as the relevant framework for compiling MyroC programs. For example, running the spirit-song.c program utilizes these steps:

   make -f Makefile-windows-apps spirit-song
   ./spirit-song
   

4. Although this command sequence should work without trouble, typing -f Makefile-windows-apps for compiling every program can be somewhat tedious and error prone. To simplify the compiling process, make a copy of Makefile-windows-apps to a new file Makefile

   cp Makefile-windows-apps Makefile
   

5. With this step the make command will use Makefile as its default. In this context, one can compile and run programs with a simpler sequence:

   make spirit-song
   ./spirit-song
   

   Notes: Following this same approach, any MyroC application programs may be compiled using the make command—assuming file MyroC-windows-apps is present in the current directory. (As already discussed, copying MyroC-windows-apps to a Makefile file allows a simple invocation of the make command.)

created 17 October 2015 revised 19 October 2015 revised 23 February 2016 revised for Windows 10: 31 December 2020 – 4 January 2021 revised 23-24 Aprl 2021
For more information, please contact Henry M. Walker at walker@cs.grinnell.edu.

	The MyroC project is Copyright © 2011-2021 by Henry M. Walker.	Selected materials copyright by Marge Coahran, Samuel A. Rebelsky, John David Stone, and Henry Walker and used by permission. This Web page and all MyroC materials and software are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.