Environment

Abstract interface for an Isabelle environment of a particular version in a path with an underlying PIDE machinery.

As opposed to a mere logic-less Setup, an environment knows how to manage Isabelle processes. It can also manage multiple running processes at the same time.

A subclass of this class is called implementation throughout libisabelle.

It is highly recommended to use Setup.makeEnvironment to instantiate implementations.

While implementations may be created freely by users, it is recommended to only use the bundled implementations for the supported Isabelle versions. By convention, they live in the package specified in Environment.packageName.

Contract

• An implementation is a subclass of this class.
• The class name of the implementation must be Environment. There must be a BuildInfo class in the same package.
• Implementations must be final and provide a constructor with exactly one argument (of type Environment.Context). There must be no other constructors. The constructor should be private.
• Implementations must be annotated with Implementation, where the given identifier corresponds to the version identifier.

Footnote

Due to name clashes in the underlying PIDE machinery (which is provided by Isabelle itself and is not under control of libisabelle), it is impossible to have multiple environments for different versions in the same class loader. This is the primary reason why this class exists in the first place, to enable seamless abstraction over multiple PIDEs.