This guide will show you how to compile and run Evlan on a Windows system, starting with the source code distribution. Familiarity with the DOS command line is assumed. This guide was written for Evlan v0.3.3, but the same instructions probably apply to future versions by simply substituting the correct version number.

Before we start, allow me to explain briefly how Evlan operates. Evlan is designed to run as a background process, with only one copy of the virtual machine running on a particular system. You then connect to this process via the Evlan command client in order to issue commands. If you are only trying to play around with Evlan, this probably sounds over-complicated, but for people running Evlan servers (like me), it is very useful.

First, you will need to install MinGW, a Windows C/C++ compiler based on GCC. Make sure that MinGW's bin directory is in your PATH before continuing.

Now, unpack the Evlan source code zip. First, go into the kake-0.1.2 folder. Run build.bat. When it finishes, the "bin" and "include" folders will have been created. You need to copy the contents of these folders to MinGW's bin and include directories.

That done, open a console window and CD to the evlan-vm-0.3.3 directory. Once there, simply type "kake" to build Evlan. Once this is done, the evlan executable will be located in the newly-created "bin" directory.

At this point you may want to edit the Evlan config file to configure things like whether or not to accept remote connections and what your password should be. Take your favorite text editor to the file:

share\evlan\modules\evlan.org\internal\Config.evlan

Read the comments and edit the fields as appropriate. This may be a good time to read up on setting up SSL.

You can run Evlan from where it is, or you can install it. On Windows, installation typically means copying bin\evlan.exe and share\evlan\modules into a new folder (so that evlan.exe and the modules folder are next to each other). Put this folder wherever you want, but don't name it "bin". If you name it "bin", the Evlan executable will assume that it is part of a unix directory tree setup (like the build directory) and will look for its modules in "..\share\evlan\modules" rather than just "modules".

Choose a directory where you want Evlan to store its persistent state. Now, run Evlan from the command line as follows:

evlan --create --statedir C:\path\to\state\dir

If you just want the state files to be stored to the current directory, you can omit the --statedir switch and its parameter.

The VM is now running with a fresh state. You can now use the Evlan client to connect to the VM and issue commands (see setting up the command client). While connected, issue the following command to save the state:

/do system.service.saveState()

This will save the current state of the virtual machine to the state directory.

To stop the VM, just kill it (using ctrl-C or close the console window). To restore from your saved state in the future, run evlan as before but without the --create flag.

Hint: If you store Evlan's state files in the same folder as the executable, you can run Evlan in the future by simply double-clicking the executable.