README

Overview
========

Spot is a model-checking library developed collaboratively by LRDE
and LIP6. It provides algorithms and data structures to implement
the automata-theoretic approach to LTL model checking.

It is mainly meant to be used as a C++ library, but it also comes with
a few handy command-line utilities, and some Python bindings.

Keeping in touch
================

If you have questions regarding Spot, a bug reports, please send them
to <spot@lrde.epita.fr>.  This is a public mailing list which you may
subscribe to at https://www.lrde.epita.fr/mailman/listinfo/spot but you
should feel free to post without subscribing.

We also run an extremely low traffic list for announcements of
new releases of Spot.  You may subscribe to that list at
https://www.lrde.epita.fr/mailman/listinfo/spot-announce


Installation
============

Requirements
------------

Spot requires a C++11-compliant compiler.
G++ 4.8 or later, as well as Clang++ 3.5 or later should work.

Spot expects a complete installation of Python (version 3.3 or later).
Especially, Python's headers files should be installed.  If you don't
have Python installed, and do NOT want to install it, you should run
configure with the --disable-python option (see below).

Optional third-party dependencies
----------------------------------

If the SAT-solver glucose is found on your system, it will be used by
our test suite to test our SAT-based minimization algorithm.

Spot used to distribute a modified version of LBTT (an LTL to Büchi
test bench), mostly fixing errors reported by recent compilers.
However Spot now distributes its own reimplementation of LBTT, called
ltlcross, so the use of LBTT is completely optional.  The last
modified version of LBTT we used to distribute can now be found at
  http://www.lrde.epita.fr/dload/spot/lbtt-1.2.1a.tar.gz
If some lbtt binary is found on your system, it will be used in the
test suite in addition to ltlcross.


Building and installing
-----------------------

Spot follows the traditional `./configure && make && make check &&
make install' process.  People unfamiliar with the GNU Build System
should read the file INSTALL for generic instructions.

In addition to its usual options, ./configure will accept some
flags specific to Spot:

  --disable-python
    Turn off the compilation of Python bindings.  These bindings
    offers a convenient interface when used in an IPython notebook,
    and are also used to build the CGI script that translates LTL
    formulas on-line.  You may safely disable these, especially if you
    do not have a working Python 3.2+ installation or if you are
    attempting some cross-compilation.

  --enable-devel
    Enable debugging symbols, turn off aggressive optimizations, and
    turn on assertions.  This option is effective by default in
    development versions (version numbers ending with a letter).
    It is equivalent to
      --enable-debug
      --enable-warnings
      --enable-assert
      --enable-optimizations=-O
  --disable-devel
    Disable development options.  This is the case by default in
    releases (version numbers NOT ending with a letter).
    It is equivalent to
      --disable-debug
      --disable-warnings
      --disable-assert
      --enable-optimizations

Here are the meaning of the fine-tuning options, in case
--enable/disable-devel is not enough.

  --disable-assert
  --enable-assert
    Control assertion checking.

  --disable-warnings
  --enable-warnings
    Whether warnings should be output.  Note that during development
    we consider warnings to be errors.

  --disable-debug
  --enable-debug
    Whether to compile extra debugging code.

  --enable-optimizations
  --enable-optimizations=FLAGS
  --disable-optimizations
    Whether the compilation should be optimized.  When FLAGS are
    given, use these as optimization flags.  Otherwise, pick working
    flags from a built-in list.


Documentation
=============

Some documentation can be found in the doc/ directory.

- doc/spot.html/ contains documentation for the C++ library.

- doc/tl/tl.pdf contains documentation about the various temporal
  logic operators supported by Spot

"make install" will install man pages for command-line tools.  (These
man pages can also be found in the spot/bin/man/ subdirectory of the
source tree.)  Additional documentation about these tools can be found
in doc/userdoc/, or online at https://spot.lrde.epita.fr/tools.html



Layout of the source tree
=========================

Core directories
----------------

spot/             Sources for libspot.
   bin/           User tools built using the Spot library.
      man/        Man pages for the above tools.
   graph/         Graph representations.
   kripke/        Kripke Structure interface.
   tl/            Temporal Logic formulas and algorithms.
   misc/          Miscellaneous support files.
   parseaut/      Parser for automata in multiple formats.
   parsetl/       Parser for LTL/PSL formulas.
   priv/          Private algorithms, used internally but not exported.
   ta/            TA objects and cousins (TGTA).
   taalgos/       Algorithms on TA/TGTA.
   tests/         Tests for the whole library.
   twa/           TωA objects and cousins (Transition-based ω-Automata).
   twaalgos/      Algorithms on TωA.
      gtec/       Couvreur's Emptiness-Check.
   sanity/        Sanity tests for the whole project.
doc/              Documentation for Spot.
   org/           Source of userdoc/ as org-mode files.
   tl/            Documentation of the Temporal Logic operators.
   userdoc/       HTML documentation about the command-line tools.
   spot.html/     HTML reference manual for the library.
bench/            Benchmarks for ...
   dtgbasat/      ... SAT-based minimization of DTGBA,
   emptchk/       ... emptiness-check algorithms,
   ltl2tgba/      ... LTL-to-Büchi translation algorithms,
   ltlcounter/    ... translation of a class of LTL formulas,
   ltlclasses/    ... translation of more classes of LTL formulas,
   spin13/        ... compositional suspension and other improvements,
   stutter/       ... stutter-invariance checking algorithms,
   wdba/          ... WDBA minimization (for obligation properties).
wrap/             Wrappers for other languages.
   python/        Python bindings for Spot and BuDDy
      tests/      Tests for these bindings
      ajax/       LTL-to-TGBA translator with web interface, using Ajax.
spot-if/          Interfaces between Spot and other libraries.
   ltsmin/        Interface with DiVinE2 and SpinS.

Third party software
--------------------

buddy/            A customized version of BuDDy 2.3 (a BDD library).
ltdl/             Libtool's portable dlopen() wrapper library.
lib/              Gnulib's portability modules.
utf8/             Nemanja Trifunovic's utf-8 routines.
elisp/		  Related emacs modes, used for building the documentation.

Build-system stuff
------------------

m4/      M4 macros used by configure.ac.
tools/   Helper scripts used during the build.
debian/  Configuration file to build Debian packages.

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