ABC: A C Front-end
                         http://vsl.cis.udel.edu/abc

ABC is a Java-based C front-end.  It provides a pre-processor and
parser for C programs.  These produce an Abstract Syntax Tree
representation of the program.  The AST includes information such as
the type of every expression, the "symbol table" (i.e., the mapping
which yields the entity corresponding to each identifier in the
program), and a precise description of the origin of each AST element
in the original source files.  There is also support for transforming
ASTs.  

The ABC interface is intended to be thoroughly documented and easy to
use.  The code is 100% Java.

No one is sure what ABC stands for.  It may stand for "ANTLR-Based C
front-end" because it uses the ANTLR parser generator at several
steps.  However, ABC goes significantly beyond the services provided
by these ANTLR parsers.  ABC may stand for "A Better C front-end" or
using it may be as easy as the "ABCs".

ABC is developed by Stephen F. Siegel and Timothy K. Zirkel at the
Verified Software Laboratory, University of Delaware.  It is
distributed under the terms of the GNU Lessor General Public
License (LGPL).

------------------------- Binary Installation -------------------------

For most users, this will be the easiest way to install and use CIVL.

1. Install a Java 7 SDK if you have not already.  Go to
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/ for the
latest from Oracle.  On linux, you can optionally sudo apt-get install
openjdk-7-jdk.

2. If you already have the VSL dependencies library, you may
skip this step.  Otherwise, download the archive of VSL
dependencies from http://vsl.cis.udel.edu/lib/tools/vsl_depend,
choosing the version for your OS type (32-bit linux,
64-bit linux, or 64-bit OS X).  Unzip and untar the
downloaded .tgz file and you will have a folder named "vsl".
If you do not already have a directory /opt, create one with
"mkdir /opt".  Move vsl into /opt.  Use sudo as needed.

3. Download the ABC distribution from http://vsl.cis.udel.edu/abc.

4. Unzip and untar the downloaded file if this does not happen
automatically.  This should result in a folder named
ABC-TAG, where TAG is some version id string.  This folder
contains the following:

 - README   : this file
 - bin      : containing one executable sh script called "civl"
 - lib      : containing civl-TAG.jar
 - licenses : licenses for CIVL and included libraries
 - examples : some example CIVL programs

5. Move ABC-TAG into /opt.

6. Put the abc script in your path however you like to put things
in your path.   Either move it to a directory in your path,
or create a symlink to it, or edit your .profile or equivalent
to put it in your path.