The very first order of business is to make sure we have a working copy of Yazoo. Since Yazoo is intended to be embedded and/or extended with C or C++ routines at compile-time, it is distributed as a set of source files rather than as an executable. How to merge Yazoo with the external C/C++ code was explained in the last section. The simplest way to build the executable is to use the command-line tool make along with a C/C++ compiler such as gcc; free versions of these exist for many platforms. To build Yazoo with make, put everything---source files, header files, Makefile and `.zoo' files---into the same directory; navigate to that directory from a command prompt; and then type "make yazoo". This should, theoretically, create a yazoo executable in that same directory.
There seems to be no fail-safe way to package Yazoo so that it will build correctly on all machines. The makefile requires gcc (for C) or gpp (for C++), and obviously make, to be installed for Yazoo to be built. Different systems may have more idiosyncratic requirements. Most notably, a `load-math' (-lm) option often has to be passed to the linker, necessitating the following change to the makefile:
yazoo: $(OBJ)
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) -o yazoo $(OBJ) -lm
Inevitably, other problems will arise on some machines, but the author has not encountered them yet, and he can only trust in the resourcefulness of the user to deal with them.
To run Yazoo after it has been compiled, go to its directory and enter the command "./yazoo" (UNIX and Mac), or just "yazoo" (PC/Windows). Yazoo should present a command prompt. It will look like this:
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Last update: July 28, 2013