ACL2 Version 8.2 Installation Guide
Easy Install for Unix-like Systems
Here, "Unix-like Systems" includes Unix, GNU-Linux, and MacOS X.  Note
that a quicker and even easier install may be possible, by instead
obtaining
a pre-built binary
distribution if one is available for your platform.  Otherwise,
you can follow the directions below, which start by fetching a file
hosted at the github ACL2
System and Books website.  The result is a directory containing
not only the ACL2 system but, in the books/ subdirectory,
the community
books (libraries).  The ACL2 system is developed at the
University of Texas at Austin
and can also be
obtained or explored separately.
- Connect to a directory whose full pathname contains no whitespace
and which does not already contain a subdirectory
named acl2-sourcesoracl2-8.2.  Then use
either of the following two methods to obtain
the ACL2 source code and community books.
    - (Recommended if you don't plan to
    update from git)
 Fetch
      gzipped
	tar fileacl2-8.2.tar.gzfrom GitHub and
      then execute:
 tar xfz acl2-8.2.tar.gz
 This will create a subdirectory namedacl2-8.2.
    Connect toacl2-8.2.
- (Development snapshot, required if
      you want
      to update
      from GitHub: generally should be fine, but on rare occasions
      may be incomplete, fragile, or unable to pass the usual
      regression tests)
 Execute:
 git clone https://github.com/acl2/acl2 acl2-sources
 This will create the subdirectoryacl2-sources.
      Connect toacl2-sources/.
 
- Obtain a Common Lisp implementation if you don't
already have one.
- Type:
make LISP=<path_to_your_lisp_executable>
 This will create a script in your connected directory
   for running ACL2.  The script is namedsaved_acl2.
 Note: You will need Gnu make.  We have seen
problems on some Linux systems with Version 3.81 of that utility, so
if you encounter errors, please consider
our instructions for downloading and
installing GNU make version 3.80.
- Certify books, for example with
make
 or something fancier such as the following:
(time nice make -j 8 ACL2=/u/smith/bin/acl2 basic) >& make-basic.log
 This may take only a few minutes, depending your -j value,
your machine, and your
host Common Lisp.  The
resulting log should contain no occurrences of the string
``CERTIFICATION FAILED''; a normal exit (status 0) should guarantee
this.  If you want additional explanation and further options (e.g.,
about perhaps avoiding root login), see the documentation
for BOOKS-CERTIFICATION.
You now have an ACL2 executable calledsaved_acl2 (from step 3)
and access to certified community books (from step 4).  Enjoy!
THE ABOVE INSTRUCTIONS MAY BE ALL THAT YOU
NEED. Otherwise, read on....
More Information
Note: To build variants of ACL2, see the documentation
  topic REAL
  for ACL2(r)
  and COMPILING-ACL2P
  for ACL2(p).