Evolvica is a platform for implementation of and experimentation with evolutionary algorithms. It is the successor of eaLib, which has been developed at the Technical University Ilmenau, Germany throughout 2000-2002. Evolvica uses a very similiar structure for creating algorithms like eaLib. In contrast to eaLib it has been simplified in order to make the API more accessible without loosing the flexibility of the eaLib concept. In addition genetic operators have been defined in such a way to support visual algorithm composition in a graphical editor.
This manual serves as the basis for people only wanting to play with evolutionary algorithms as well as for people doing serious (insert smiley here) wanting to implement their own operators. Therefore this manual is split into two parts: the first one deals with the graphical user interface (GUI) while the second part explains the basic genetic mechanisms as well as the adaption of operators to prepare them for use in the GUI.
Please note that this manual is not (yet) in a state of completeness. As Evolvica is still under development this manual also is. Things may be added, changed or discarded in the future. Consider this manual complete if Evolvica reaches the version number 1.0, although this may happen at some point of time that is still somewhere in the far future.
Generally there's not much to say about an installation. The only requirement to start Evolvica is to have an installed Java Developer Environment of at least version 1.4.0 or later. Evolvica comes in one large zipfile resp. a gzipped tarfile. Unzip it into some location of your choice somewhere on your harddisk. Please note that the installation path may not be longer than 64 characters otherwise this may cause trouble. To start Evolvica simply run the executable file that comes with the software evolvica.exe under win32, evolvica under Unix. Unix user may need to adjust the permission of the file first).
All of the files belonging to Evolvica reside inside one single directory. All configuration data is held together inside a directory workspace. The default location of this workspace directory is inside the installation directory but it may also be moved to another location (useful in multi-user environments). In such a case Evolvica must be told where to find the workspace directory via the command line switch -data. All command line arguments of Eclipse are also valid (please see the Eclipse user manual, which is included in HTML form, for more information).
Evolvica can also be used as an Eclipse plugin. As of version 0.6.0 there's a separate plugin distribution available for download (the smallest one, in a zip-file). The zip-file contains two folders, features and plugins. Copy the contents of these folders to the appropriate folders of your Eclipse installation and you're done. The Evolvica perspective inside can be activated via the "Open a Perspective"-button or via the menu Window > Open Perspective > Others.