Running MMT without a GUI

New users usually use MMT via one of the IDEs, which use MMT as a backend.

Alternatively, advanced users can run MMT directly. This is described below.

After setting up MMT, the jars in the deploy folder can be run normally via Java. The canonical way to do that is to run

java -jar MMT/deploy/mmt.jar

For convenience, the folder MMT/deploy contains shell scripts for Windows and Unix that are directly executable.

However, to casually sample MMT, you should not execute MMT directly at all. Instead, you should setup jedit and play with MMT example files.

Run Modes

MMT can be used in 3 different modes

  • batch: MMT executes its command-line arguments (if any). This is the initial mode. When the command-line arguments have been executing, MMT transitions into interactive or server mode.
  • interactive: MMT displays a shell and responds to commands interactively. The end-of-input character transitions into server mode; the command exit terminates MMT completely.
  • server: MMT waits for auxiliary threads (if any) to terminate and then terminates. This is typically run as a background thread. Auxiliary threads may include in particular the MMT web server.

Depending on the command line arguments, MMT chooses whether it switches to interactive or server mode. In particular, without any arguments, it switches to interactive mode.

Startup Code

Whenever MMT is run, it looks for a startup script in the location deploy/startup.msl. MMT also tries to load a configuration from deploy/mmtrc or from your OS-specific home directory. The latter is created during setup.

This is particularly useful for registering extensions and archives that depend on machine-specific external paths. An example startup is provided in the file deploy/startup.msl.example.

Customizing MMT

Because MMT is language and application-independent, running MMT by itself does not do anything - MMT must be customized by defining a language and building an application on top of the MMT tool. The MMT system suite includes various language definitions and applications to use. See the respective pages for instructions on loading individual languages and running individual applications.

Other Ways to Run MMT during Development

Developers may also want to run MMT in different ways.

Running from Small Jar Files

The deploy folder contains mmt.jar, which is simply the union of the individual jars in the main folder. When developing specific parts of MMT, it is usually sufficient to rebuild only the individual jar that was changed.

The deploy folder contains shell scripts that automate running from these smaller jars:

  • mmt (for Unix) and mmt.bat (for Windows): executes MMT commands and/or opens an MMT shell, mmt -help displays the available options
  • run-file.bat: a convenience script for Windows that can be associated with MMT shell scripts.

Users may wish to add the deploy folder to the PATH enviroment variable.

Running from Classes

When working in an IDE, you usually want to run MMT directly from classes rather than building a jar file.

For that, use the main class info.kwarc.mmt.api.frontend.Run in the project mmt-api.

If you need to use additional projects, you can build those into classes as well or use the individual jars mentioned above.