How to start?
Once SpinRCP is successfully installed, the following two steps have to be done.
- After launching the product, the SpinRCP's splash screen appears first and then
the Workspace Launcher dialog prompts you for what workspace to use for this session.
A workspace is a folder where SpinRCP stores your projects. According to a platform,
a default workspace is set in your home directory. The dialog will allow you to browse
for or manually enter a new workspace location. If there exists any previously created
workspace (e.g. created by using a previous version of SpinRCP), you may just select it
and you will be using your existing workspace with a new version of SpinRCP. After
clicking the OK button, the chosen workspace with the default SpinRCP perspective opens.
In the Title Bar, the SpinRCP's version
and release date are shown. If the path to Spin is already set in the PATH environment
variable, the Spin version and its release date are shown as well. Below the Title Bar,
the Menu Bar, and the Tool Bar there are three visual components:
a Model Navigator View at the left side,
a Promela Editor
at the upper right side,
and a Console View at the bottom right side.
The Model Navigator View is activated.
If you move a cursor on its highlighted title bar, a tooltip Workspace appears.
This means that the Model Navigator shows the contents of your workspace folder. It is empty
if the workspace was newly created.
You can rearrange the layout of SpinRCP's windows by dragging and dropping views and
editors to different positions within the Workbench window, resize them by dragging
the sashes which separate them, or even detach any window by dragging and dropping it outside
the Workbench. A detached window is very useful if you have two monitors and you maximize it
to the full screen on the second monitor. Any detached window can be attached back to
an arbitrary position within the SpinRCP's Workbench window by using drag and drop operation again.
- SpinRCP needs to know the paths to three external tools: Spin, C compiler, and Graphviz dot.
It is highly recommended that you update the PATH environment variable of your system
with the paths to these external tools. Set these paths in SpinRCP by
opening the Spin preference page Window > Preferences > Spin and enter or select
individual paths using Browse... buttons. If the PATH environment variable of your
computer system includes paths to Spin, C compiler, and Graphviz dot, you don't need to
enter their absolute paths but just their names (e.g.,
spin
, gcc
,
dot
). The default path to Spin is preset to spin
. If you have given the Spin executable
a different file name, change the path accordingly. In addition to the latest Spin version
you may have installed some of its previous versions (e.g. Spin Version 5.2.5,
Spin Version 6.1.0, and Spin Version 6.4.3 under file names titled
spin525
, spin610
, and spin643
, respectively) in your
Spin directory. In order to analyze your models with different versions of Spin, switch
between versions by either entering or selecting the chosen executable file name into the
Spin path text field. Paths with spaces are also allowed. SpinRCP handles them correctly.