This step-by-step guide walks you through how to get Biksel up and running quickly on a Raspberry Pi.
Note: this guide has been tested on a Raspberry Pi 2
running Raspberry Pi OS with desktop
, 32-bit, release date
4th April 2022, Debian version 11 (Bullseye).
Do on your Raspberry Pi – requires internet connection.
Visit the Download
section of the Biksel webpage and click on the link
labeled biksel-x.y.z.tar.gz
(source package)
. This will download
Biksel. (Note: x.y.z will
actually be a few numbers – this is the version number of
the latest release of Biksel.)
In your file manager, open the Downloads
folder and
find the
file biksel-x.y.z.tar.gz
that you just downloaded. Right click on this file and
select Extract Here
. This will extract the Biksel package
into a new folder
called biksel-x.y.z
.
Double click on the
folder biksel-x.y.z
to
enter it, then press F4 to start a terminal
(command
prompt) session within this folder.
Troubleshooting: due to a glitch in
Raspberry Pi OS, you may get an error message at this step
saying Terminal emulator is not set
. If this happens,
press OK to dismiss the error message and a Preferences
window will appear. Enter lxterminal
in the box
labelled Terminal emulator
at the top of this window, then
close the window. Now press F4 again in the file manager and the
problem should be fixed.
In the terminal session, enter the following command and press Return (be sure to enter the command exactly as given here, without any mistakes – you may find it easiest if you copy and paste the command from this webpage into the terminal window):
sudo apt-get install gcc libx11-dev libxext-dev libxi-dev emacs
This will install some software packages needed for Biksel to work.
You may be prompted Do you want to continue?
to confirm
that installation should go ahead – press Return to accept.
Next enter the following command and press Return:
./build
This will build Biksel.
Then also enter the following command and press Return:
sudo ./install
This will install Biksel.
Finally, enter the following command and press Return:
If you are an experienced Emacs user and maintain your
own .emacs
file, this command will overwrite it. See the
appendix at the end of Chapter 1 of
the Biksel user manual for information on how to avoid
this. If you have never used Emacs before, or have not written
your own .emacs
file, you can safely run this
command.
cp $(bikpath emacs-init-file) ~/.emacs
This will set up Emacs
, the code editor we use when
writing Biksel programs, to work conveniently with Biksel.
Do on your Raspberry Pi – does not require internet connection.
In your file manager, create a new folder (menu →
File → New Folder…) for your program and give it a
name ending in
.bik
, for example my-program.bik
.
Please note: each Biksel program you
write must go in its own folder with a name ending
in .bik
. If you try to put files for multiple programs in
the same folder they will clash and you will get an error when
you try to build and run them.
Inside the folder you just created, create an empty file
(menu → File → New File…) and give it a name
ending in .c
, for example main.c
.
Open the Emacs
code editor by clicking on the
Raspberry Pi icon in the top-left corner of the screen and
selecting Programming
then Emacs (GUI)
.
Troubleshooting: if you have just
installed Biksel for the first time and the Emacs (GUI)
menu entry does not appear, rebooting your Pi should fix the
problem.
Drag and drop the empty file that you created in step 2 from the file manager into the Emacs code editor window.
Type some code into the code editor, for example:
void Main(Channel io)
{
WaitForKeyPress(io);
}
Press F7 to build and run.
Do on your Raspberry Pi – does not require internet connection.
Start a terminal
(command prompt) session by
clicking on the Raspberry Pi icon in the top-left corner of the
screen and selecting Accessories
then Terminal
.
In the terminal session, enter the following command and press Return:
bikpath manual-html
This will print out the path to a copy of the Biksel user manual stored locally on your Raspberry Pi.
Select the path that was printed out in the previous step, then copy and paste it into the location bar of your web browser. You can bookmark the manual in your browser to easily access it next time.