Pavil is a web app written by Chris Bubernak under a Discovery Learning Apprenticeship with Evan Chang and with help from Devin Coughlin.
It is incomplete.
It is written in JavaScript with the SproutCore 1.x framework (NB: NOT 2.0, which is a complete rewrite), and it has bugs with the latest 1.8.
In order to develop Pavil, you need to install SproutCore 1.8, which itself requires ruby.
Here is how I (Devin) got Pavil more or less up and running on 1 September 2012 under OS X 10.8.1 (Mountain Lion).
The process for a linux should be similar.
Steps:
1) install rvm (which manages multiple ruby versions) and ruby:
% curl -L https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --ruby
2) open a new shell install sproutcore:
% gem install sproutcore -v 1.6.0.1
3) checkout pavil:
% svn co https://www.cs.colorado.edu/svn/pl/projects/pavil/
4) Change directory into the pavil source base:
% cd pavil/pavil
5) run the server:
% sproutcore server
6) go to http://127.0.0.1:4020/ in a browser (Chrome is your best bet).
7) Select pavil
8) Using the upload file widget, open an analysis json file in pavil/test_json_files/