Installing Storm

This page describes how to install Storm on your system. For most users, it is enough to install the pre-built binaries. This allows running programs written in Storm, and to develop new programs in Storm. If you intend to develop programs in Storm, you might want to have a look at the section developing in storm, which describes how to set up a convenient development experience.

If you plan on using Storm from a terminal, you might wish to read this page after installing Storm.

Windows

The Windows version of Storm assumes that you have a system with an x86-based CPU and are running on Windows 7 or later (Windows 8 or later if you wish to use SSL connections).

The downloads page provides two archives for Windows, one for 32-bit systems and one for 64-bit systems. To install Storm, simply unpack the downloaded archive to a location you find convenient, and run Storm.exe. For example, one can open the ZIP file in explorer and drag and drop the files into another directory.

The first time you start Storm, you may see a dialog with the title "Windows has protected your PC". This is shown because Windows stores that the file originates from the Internet, and the file has not been digitally signed. To run Storm, click the link titled "More info", and then the button "Run anyway".

The applications listed in the manual are also available as .bat-files. For example, to start Progvis, launch Progvis.bat.

Linux

Storm requires a 64-bit CPU to run on Linux. Storm supports both x86-64 (AMD64) and ARM (ARMv8) CPUs on Linux, and is thus able to run on everything from desktops to small single-board computers.

To install Storm, you have two options:

Using the Package Manager

If you are running a recent Debian-based system, you can install Storm from the system's package manager. Note, however, that due to the release cycles of Debian-based systems, the version you will get this way is likely a bit older than what is available through this page. This is usually not a problem, but something to be aware of in case something on the Storm webpage does not match what is available in your installation.

To install from the package manager, simply run the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt install storm-lang

By default, this will install Storm itself, and all libraries that are mentioned on this page. It is also possible to install different libraries separately if desired (the packages are named storm-lang-X where X is the name of the library).

After this, you can start Storm by typing storm in your terminal. Progvis is available either through the command progvis or through the launcher menu (assumes that the progvis package was installed).

Installing from the Webpage

The binaries on the Storm webpage are built using the oldstable version of Debian. They are therefore known to work on recent Debian-based systems (e.g. Ubuntu). They have also been tested on other distributions, such as Fedora and Arch Linux, and may work there as well.

The binary releases contain everything that is necessary, except for core system libraries that are likely already installed on your system. Therefore, installing Storm is as simple as downloading the appropriate release from the downloads page, unpacking it, and then running the Storm executable.

Note: Chrome or Chromium has a habit of automatically uncompressing .tar.gz-files. This causes some archive managers to be confused. If this happens to you, simply rename the file from .tar.gz to .tar and try again.

On the command-line, this can be done as follows:

# Create a directory where you wish to install Storm:
mkdir ~/storm
cd ~/storm

# Download the archive:
# For x86-64/amd64:
wget https://storm-lang.org/storm_mps_amd64.tar.gz
# For ARM:
wget https://storm-lang.org/storm_mps_arm64.tar.gz

# Unpack the archive:
tar xf storm_mps_*.tar.gz

# Launch Storm:
./Storm

The archive also contains .sh-files to start the applications described in this manual. For example, to launch Progvis, run Progvis.sh.

If Storm starts, but crashes when you import certain libraries, make sure that you have Gtk3 and OpenSSL installed. If Storm does not start at all, you might need to compile it from source.