Downloading and installing Scriba is very easy if you are using one of the platforms for we which we have prebuilt binaries. Otherwise, it's slightly more complicated and we refer you to the Running On Untested Platforms section below.

The requirements for running Scriba are simpe: you need Java 5 and an OS that is supported by BerkeleyDB (see Oracle's page on BerkeleyDB for more information). BerkeleyDB is available for most major OSes. Scriba needs BerkeleyDB because it uses HyperGraphDB.

While BerkeleyDB is included in the Scriba distribution, Java is not.

Downloads

If your platform is not part of this list of downloads, please read the Running On Untested Platforms and consider contributing to the ANT script so we can include it in the future.

Installation

To install Scriba:

1. Unzip the downloaded archive into a directory of your chosing.
2. Navigate to the newly created scriba subdirectory.
3. If you have a JAVA_HOME environment variable already, you can just run the shell script appropriate for your OS (run.cmd for Windows and run.sh for Unix/Linux).
4. Otherwise open the Readme.txt and follow the instructions on how to modify the shell script. Basically, you just need to tell it where Java is installed. Then run the script.

Running For the First Time

The first time you start Scriba, you will see a dialog box prompting you to select and open a niche from a list of available ones. For present purposes, you can think of a niche as a workspace. It's essentially data the Scriba manages in a certain directory in your computer.

Initially, there won't be any niches on your computer, so you need to create one. So, click on the New Niche button, type in a name for your niche and select a directory where you want to place it. It is strongly advisable to create a brand new directory and dedicated it to the niche. This directory is where a bunch of large binary database files will reside and it's entirely managed by Scriba. To create a new directory from the dialog box, right click inside the currently selected directory and choose New Folder from the context menu.

Aftere you are done creating a new niche, you can open it and go inside Scriba where more help is available.

Have Fun!

Running On Untested Platforms

The above installation requirements and procedures are based on the operating environments within which Scriba has already been reported to run successfully. However, since the software is entirely based on Java and open-source software, it should be possible to run it in all environments supporting these dependencies. Java runs on all major operating systems. So there shouldn't be a problem there. BerkeleyDB is the only dependency where you might need to do extra work. And if you do, please email us about your success so we can incorporate it in future distributions.

Scriba's current distribution only contains native libraries and shell scripts for the Linux and Windows platforms. To run Scriba on another operating system, you need to:

1. Make sure you have Java 5 installed.
2. Make sure you have BerkeleyDB binaries compiled and functionnning. Please go to BerkeleyDB's web site for information on how to run BerkeleyDB on your operating system.
3. Download any distribution from the above list to get all needed jar files.
4. Put the BerkeleyDB shared libraries in a folder, preferably SCRIBA_HOME/lib/native/YOUR_OS
5. Start Java with the following command line:

   java -cp scriba.jar;[all jars under SCRIBA_HOME/lib] -Djava.library.path=$SCRIBA_NATIVE com.kobrix.scriba.boot.StartMeUp

   where SCRIBA_NATIVE refers to the location of the BerkeleyDB shared libraries.