Configuration language support for software installation

Summary form only given. The authors describe facilities which have been included in a configuration language called PCL to support the process of system installation. PCL is used to support the installation of two classes of distributed system. These are distributed applications where a single, `logical´ system is structured as a set of processes which may execute concurrently on separate processors and multi-copy applications where the same system is installed on several different nodes in a network. PCL can describe both hardware and software systems. This has allowed the authors to extend the language with a description of constraints on system installation and with facilities for specifying where particular software is to be installed. They use a special purpose installation tool (PCL-Install) to interpret installation instructions. The advantages of this approach are that installation procedures are easy to write and understand, the installation framework for a family of related systems can be defined and the model provides support for installation across heterogeneous networks