The upgrade from Soar 8 to Soar 8.4 should be transparent for most users. However, under the hood, there are a number of improvements in the Soar 8.4 release. These modifications are described in the Soar 8.4 Release Notes.
For help getting started writing Soar 8 code, start with The Soar 8 Tutorial.
Soar 8.4 requires that Tcl and Tk be installed on all systems (Mac, Windows and Unix). It is recommended that users install Tcl/Tk 8.0. The pre-built binaries below require Tcl 8.0. If you are upgrading from Soar 7.0.*, or don't have Soar at all yet, you will have to check to see if you have Tcl, and if so, what version you have. If you are upgrading from Soar 7.1 or Soar 7.2, then you already have Tcl 7.6 and Tk 4.2 installed. Soar 8.4 is also compatible with Tcl 7.6 and Tk 4.2, but it may require that you rebuild Soar, linking with Tcl7.6/Tk4.2. The binaries provided below were built for Tcl/Tk8.0. The Linux binary will work under either Tcl 8.0 or Tcl 7.6, but I don't think the Windows and Mac binaries are compatible with Tcl 7.6. The README.(systype) files in the distribution will tell you how to check for Tcl on your system, and what to do if you don't have it.
Documentation for the C-Level api, can be found both as html and as a .tgz archive
The standard installation location for Tcl/Tk on Windows is in "C:\Program
Files\TCL" If you don't see Tcl there, first do a File Find on your
system to see if someone installed Tcl somewhere else. If you don't
have Tcl8.0 already installed on your system, grab the Windows
95, and Windows NT self-extracting installer (tcl804.exe):
(about 1.75Mbytes) The file is a self-extracting executable. It will
install the Tcl and Tk libraries, the wish
and tclsh
programs, and documentation.
If at all possible, use the defaults for file locations and installation settings. Soar-8.4 will require no reconfiguration for your Windows system if you have installed Tcl/Tk on the C: drive (specifically in "C:\Program Files\TCL"), and if Soar is unzipped to c:\ (it will default to a folder called Soar-8.4). Just open the Soar-8.4 folder and dbl-click on the Soar icon (a feather, for now) to start Soar. You my have to first edit the "properties" of the Soar shortcut to make sure the pathname of the executable is valid for your machine. If you need to use locations other than the defaults, or if you aren't able to run Soar by dbl-clicking on the Soar icon, see the README.Win file for information about what you will need to change to run Soar.
Download and extract the Soar archive file (by dbl-clicking on the Soar-84.sea icon), which will create a folder called "soar-8.4". The standard installation location for Tcl/Tk on Macs is in "System Folder/Extensions/Tool Command Language/" If you don't find a "Tool Command Language" folder there, or you don't have Tcl 7.6 / Tk 4.2, open the soar-8.4 folder and double-click on the Tcl installer. Once Tcl has been installed, go back to the soar-8.4 folder and click on the "SoarMac" icon to start Soar. See the README.Macintosh file for more details on how to get started.