Link grammar binding for SWI-Prolog

This library provides a SWI-Prolog binding to the Link Grammar library

The Link Grammar library is a syntactic parser based on link grammar. Given a sentence, the system assigns to it a syntactic structure, which consists of a set of labeled links connecting pairs of words. The parser also produces a "constituent" representation of a sentence (showing noun phrases, verb phrases, etc.).

This document details how to build from sources

Prerequisites

First, you will need to install SWI-Prolog in order to use its static library and headers during compilation. On Debian or Ubuntu, this can be done by running:

apt-get install swi-prolog

On Windows, you will have to install SWI-Prolog for Windows.

Compiling the foreign library from the sources

On Linux, you will need the standard build tools (make, gcc etc...)

On Windows, you will have to install:

• either Cygwin (and always use the cygwin*.dll library altogether with the binding library)
• or MingWin and compile natively for Windows API

Fetching the source code

Checkout a fresh copy if the link grammar binding for SWI-Prolog:

git clone https://github.com/lains/link_grammar_prolog.git

Compilation and installation from the SWI-Prolog CLI

Once the sources have been extracted, you can run SWI-Prolog's built-in packager, from the root of the sources:

swipl -g "pack_install('.'),halt" -t 'halt(1)'

Compilation from the shell

Once the sources have been extracted, you can run build the foreign library, from the root of the sources:

make

Alternative compilation using static linking to the libpl.a library

Once installed, look for the static library libpl.a or libswipl.a, on Debian/Ubuntu:

dpkg -S libpl.a;dpkg -S libswipl.a

Write down the absolute PATH to the .a file, and set the environment variable STATIC_SWILIBPL to point to this file, for example:

export STATIC_SWILIBPL=/usr/lib/libswipl.a

Now, look for the header file SWI-Prolog.h, on Debian/Ubuntu:

dpkg -S SWI-Prolog.h

Write down the directory containing the file SWI-Prolog.h, and set the environment variable SWIINC to point to this file, for example:

export SWIINC=/usr/lib/swi-prolog/include

Under Windows, setting the variable SWIHOME might be enough for the Makefile to automatically guess the value for STATIC_SWILIBPL and SWIINC.

Once STATIC_SWILIBPL and SWIINC environment variables are set properly, from the root of the sources, run:

make

This will lead to the creation of the shared library lgp.so or lgp.dll in the root of the repository. This file is the C-library part of the binding (the foreign library in SWI-Prolog terms). This shared library will be needed by SWI-Prolog at run time (it is used by the Prolog engine when loading the Prolog binding module "lgp_lib.pl")

You will have to copy this file into a folder where SWI-Prolog will search for shared libraries. In case Cygwin is in used, you may also have to copy over the Cygwin library (`cygwin*.dll`) The lgp_lib.pl file (provided in the folder `SWI-Prolog_home_dir/` within the source) will also probably needs to be moved, or swpil has to be started from this exact folder in order to find lgp_lib.pl. Typically, this is the SWI-Prolog's home directory.

Running unit tests

From the top directory, you can run unit tests:

make check

Creating an archive that can be distributed

You can create a .zip file that contains all the library (foreign library + prolog code), by running the following command, from the root of the sources:

make pack