SSC runs on (relatively recent) 32-bit and 64-bit GNU/Linux platforms, and on recent versions of Mac OS X running on Intel processors. You can identify your platform by issuing the command

uname -sm

at the terminal prompt; you should see something like

Linux i686

on 32-bit GNU/Linux,

Linux x86_64

on 64-bit GNU/Linux, and

Darwin i386

on Mac OS X.

Since SSC generates native assembly and C code to make simulators, it requires that the GNU C Compiler (GCC) and the GNU Assembler (GAS) be installed on your system. (These are usually installed by default on GNU/Linux systems, but must be installed as part of the Xcode package on Mac OS X). You can verify that these tools exist by issuing the command

gcc

at the terminal prompt, which should produce something resembling

gcc: no input files

Change to the folder where you downloaded the relevant SSC package (ssc-VERSION-PLATFORM.tbz), and unpack the file:

tar xjf ssc-VERSION-PLATFORM.tbz

This will create a subfolder called ssc-VERSION-PLATFORM containing the SSC distribution. You can verify that the installation succeeded by issuing the commands

ssc-VERSION-PLATFORM/ssc --self-test

at the terminal prompt; this will cause SSC to try to compile and run a small model.

It's usually convenient to copy the ssc executable to a folder in your PATH, so that you can compile models from anywhere by typing

ssc model.rxn