Given that ultimately you want to write, compile and run a bunch of C++ code files, you will need the right arsenal! In this tutorial you will download the tools (gathered in a container) that you need to use Quetzal-CoalTL.

What do we need?

So the first thing you will need is a terminal, and the second thing is … a nest! And by nest, I mean some kind of environment that is suitable to the development of our Quetzal younglings.

To successfully grow the little programs I sowed across these tutorials, many things are actually required:

• a compiler

  to read our human code and translate it to the machine

• all the source code of the Quetzal library

  this, my friend, is the code you will not have to write!

• and some dependencies

  this, my friend, is the code I did not have to write!

To make things a bit easier for everybody, these things have been packaged into a portable environment: Quetzal-NEST. Think about it like a tiny virtual machine that can run on your machine. There are many ways to do this, but a popular option is to use Docker.

1 - Install Docker

Go there and simply follow the instructions: https://docs.docker.com/get-docker/

Some vocabulary:

Working with Docker, you will bump into words like images and containers. They sound a bit similar, but it’s quite important to know the difference between them.

• A Docker image is like a recipe (a template) for cooking an environment: it is read-only, it is inert, it has instructions. You will see that there are several layers in an image: these are just a bunch of read-only files that contain the recipe instructions.
• A Docker container is like the cake you just take out of the oven: it is a virtualized runtime environment that is (to some extend) isolated from your system. Just as you can make several cakes using the same recipe, you can make several containers out of a Docker images: a container is an instance of a Docker image.

Read more about the differences between Docker images and Docker containers here

2 - Install Quetzal-NEST

I created the Quetzal-NEST Docker repository to host, deploy, test and run the Quetzal framework. Really, it is just a bunch of files that configure an environment where we have all the tools we need for this tutorial.

• To download this big boy on your local laptop:

  docker pull arnaudbecheler/quetzal-nest
  

• Then, you want to run this environment by typing:

  docker run -it --entrypoint bash arnaudbecheler/quetzal-nest
  

• You can look around by typing usual bash commands like ls or mkdir.
• Try to create a folder in the home directory:

  cd home
  mkdir sandbox
  

• You can exit the container any time with exit: you will go back to your own system and the modifications you made in the container will be lost.

3 - Celebrate!

Rejoice, my friend, YOU have entered the nest!

As a welcome gift, here is a small list of commands I use often with Docker:

You know now how to get access to all the tools you need to begin coding with Quetzal-CoalTL!

Ready to lay some good (and bad) EGGS in the next parts of this tutorial?