Setting up MMT

Step 1: Get MMT

Option 1a: Download binary release

  1. Install Java ≥ 14 (check via java --version)
  2. Install git (check git --help works)
  3. Download the latest mmt.jar from UniFormal/MMT’s release page

Option 1b: build yourself + dev environment for developing MMT itself

  1. Install Java ≥ 14 (check via java --version)
  2. Install git (check git --help works)
  3. Install sbt
  4. Install IntelliJ IDEA (if you want to later use the MMT plugin, get a version compatible with the MMT plugin; tldr: a non-beta version)
  5. Within IntelliJ IDEA, install the Scala plugin.
  6. git clone https://github.com/UniFormal/MMT.git, then cd MMT, git fetch --all, git checkout devel
  7. Import a new IntelliJ project from mmt/src (choose “SBT”).

In case you want to compile MMT to a self-contained single binary mmt.jar, refer to building mmt.jar with SBT here.

Step 2: Setup environment for formalizing in MMT

If you want to formalize things in MMT’s language (“MMT surface syntax”) with pretty syntax highlighting, follow these steps:

  1. Get MMT in some way as explained above
  2. Install IntelliJ IDEA with a version compatible with the MMT plugin (tldr: a non-beta version)
  3. Install the MMT plugin

  4. In IntelliJ you can now create (and open existing) “MathHub projects”.

    Every MathHub project stores the path to an mmt.jar in its project files. Hence, if you are a developer and made changes to the MMT repository you cloned above, do not expect those changes to be reflected when working with the MMT plugin. You need to rebuild an mmt.jar first. Beware that you need to reopen IntelliJ for the file overwriting of mmt.jar to be possible and to take effect.

Alternatively — not recommended to beginners, you can still use jEdit as your development IDE. See this article describing the setup of jEdit with MMT.

Step 3: Running MMT from CLI

Some users or applications require running MMT from CLI. If you only want to use MMT from within IntelliJ IDEA, you can skip this step.

  1. Get MMT in some way as explained above
  2. Open a shell and cd to the location of your mmt.jar

  3. java -jar mmt.jar

    This triggers the setup dialog which does the following:

    1. asks for a directory into which an MMT user folder should be installed,
    2. checks out some example content repositories into that directory (requires git and internet access),
    3. determines the location of your jEdit settings directory and - if it exists - adds the MMT plugin to jEdit.

    Further instructions for setting up jEdit are available here.

    You may want to rerun this setup when having updated mmt.jar: java -jar mmt.jar :setup However, rerunning the full setup is usually not necessary. To update your jEdit instance, execute java -jar mmt.jar :jeditsetup install.

NOTES