The fabricated flashback takes place back in the 90s deep within the depths of Wean Hall
Evil Alice Developer #1: We just aren't doing enough evil in world. Sure, developing educational software and giving it away for free is a nice start, but I feel like we need to do more. Any ideas?
EAD#2: We could make Alice open source.
EAD#1: Excellent! But we'd need to carefully remove all build information.
EAD#3: But Alice is implemented in Java. There really isn't any build information. You bring the code into your favorite IDE and...
EAD#1: I don't care if there isn't any build information. Just make sure to remove it, okay? I don't want to let any of the Makefiles out!
EAD#3: There aren't any Makefiles. It's Java.
EAD#1: Just strip them out!!! We have to prevent anyone other than ourselves from being able to build from the ostensible sources.
EAD#3: Wouldn't it be easier to do that by not giving out the source?
EAD#1: Well, truth be told we don't have to prevent everyone from building from the source. Just Jeffery.
EAD#2: Who's Jeffery?
EAD#1: Oh, you'll see. You'll see. Mwa ha ha haaaaaaa!
Fade to black.
In all seriousness, I'm sure Alice2 is a pain to get running from the source. People have done it. People have translated Alice into other languages... even Hebrew which required re-laying everything out Alice right to left!
I haven't looked at Alice2 in years but armed with the main distribution (which contains some python configuration files amongst other things), the Java source, and an your favorite Java IDE you should be able to get 99% of the way there. It's that last 1% that's the problem. Like I said, its been a long time, but the “Required/IfAliceFailsTryThis.config” file might provide some insight into what command line options Java needs.
We are devoting all of our efforts to Alice3 which will be available shortly (on the order of months).
Alice3 will also be open source. Perhaps more importantly, its code will be cleaner and its configuration will be more straightforward.
Have a nice day.
