There are two ways to install CHICKEN: from a package, or manually. Package installation is probably easier, but manual installation will most likely get you a more current version.
Whichever version you choose, you will probably also want to install the readline egg, which will give you more features in the CSI interpreter.
Package Installation
dpkg
CHICKEN 4.13 is officially included in Debian buster (stretch has 4.11, jessie has 4.9, bullseye (testing) has 5.2) The compiler can be installed using
apt install chicken-bin
This will also install the runtime, which is contained in libchicken<number>, where number is the shared object version number (so multiple runtime versions can coexist on the same debian system).
Fink
Fink users can type the following command in a Terminal:
fink install chicken
This will download, compile and install the latest CHICKEN version.
iPKG
iPKG packages are available for the OpenMoko linux-based mobile phone OS.
Note, this build is for phones flashed with 2007.1.
To install the interpreter (csi) and runtime library:
ipkg install http://wiki.call-cc.org/download/chicken-scheme-interpreter_2.6_armv4t.ipk
For 2007.2 builds:
ipkg install http://zedstar.org/ipk/2007.2/chicken-scheme-interpreter_2.6_armv4t.ipk
Package maintained by john moore.
MacPorts
If you're using MacPorts, installation is very simple. Open the Terminal application and type the following:
sudo port install chicken
This will download, compile and install the latest CHICKEN version.
The MacPorts package is maintained by Arto Bendiken.
Installing the readline egg
You can install the readline egg to get history and tab-completion in csi. See Using the interpreter.
However, you may get errors when compiling the egg. This is because Apple doesn't ship GNU readline with OS X. However, there is an easy fix:
port install readline
Fixing libchicken.dylib
When using certain extensions (posix is one example), you may come across the following error:
"dlopen(libchicken.dylib, 9): image not found"
The easiest way to fix this is to add an alias to libchicken.dylib to /usr/local/lib, like so:
sudo ln -s /opt/local/lib/libchicken.dylib /usr/local/lib/
Another solution is to set the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to the location of libchicken.dylib. However, this will mess up some other programs, as they will look for their libraries in /opt/local/lib as well. One solution is to set up aliases for csi and csc in your bash profile. Add the following two lines to ~/.profile:
alias csi='DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib csi' alias csc='DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib csc'
This will set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for csi and csc, but not for other commands.
pkgsrc
Users of pkgsrc can use the lang/chicken package from pkgsrc.org to install the latest stable release.
pkgsrc is a cross-platform packaging system, which works most modern Unix-like operating systems and even on Windows (using Interix/Services for Unix or Cygwin). See this table for the full list of supported platforms.
Portage
Gentoo users can install chicken the normal way:
emerge -auv chicken
This will download, compile and install the latest version of CHICKEN (if it is not already installed).
CHICKEN's Portage ebuild is maintained by Marijn Schouten.
RPM
CHICKEN does not currently have an RPM package.
Manual Installation
Manual installation is your best bet for getting the latest and greatest version of CHICKEN.
Stable Releases
To install a stable release of CHICKEN, head to the releases page and download a tarball. Check out the README file for installation instructions.
Development Version
See the http://code.call-cc.org page for instructions about how to obtain development versions of CHICKEN.