Where to install a package

Generally, if you have installed the complete Tycho distribution, then you have nothing more to do. If you have downloaded an independent Tycho package or want to modify your installation, you might find some useful information here.

In general, a Tcl script that is supplied with a Tycho packages tries to do try several things to attempt to load required packages:

  1. Require the packages. This will work if packages have been installed into the Tcl library directory. To see what directory this is, simply start itclsh and enter
      file dirname [info library]
    

  2. Search the sub-directories of the directory given by the environment variable PACKAGE_LIBRARY, where PACKAGE is the name of the package in upper-case. This is generally only useful for small, self-contained packages.

  3. Search the sub-directories of the directories given by the environment variable TCL_PACKAGES. Again, this is mostly useful for small, self-contained packages.

  4. Search the sub-directories of the directories given by the environment variable TYCHO. Assuming that this directory points to an installation of Tycho, this will cause every single package in the Tycho tree to be located.
Mostly, the first three options are useful if you have downloaded one of the standalone packages, and startup time is important -- if the package is installed in the Tycho tree, then large chunks of the tree are scanned checking for packages that you aren't even going to need.
Copyright © 1998, The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Last updated: 06/11/98, comments to: johnr@eecs.berkeley.edu