WHERE DOES ENVY FIT IN?

We are looking into how to sink up two seprate job sits, with common software, and other tools. Envy struck us as a way to go, but we are not sure of all the possable usages of the software. Our objective is to have a way to maintain two separate job sites, and not spend alot of time checking paths, working tool directories, and so forth. How does envy fit in?

Envy is designed to centralize specification of environment variables. It also helps manage dependencies between versions. It sounds like envy will fit your requirements. Read on!

IS THERE ANY DOCUMENTATION ON THE FORMAT OF AN .ENV FILE?

See 'envy help'!

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO BE ABLE TO UNLOAD?

Sure, you could just start a fresh shell but this isn't very clean or intuitive. Also important, it is the requirement of being able to unload that restricts the kind of operations that are supported. This principle guided the design of envy as much as anything else.

HOW CAN I DO CONDITIONAL REQUIRE?

I want to do something like this:

if($SITE == "FC"){ require mgc.site1 }elsif($SITE == "CS"){ require mgc.site2 }

Maybe you didn't realize that variable interpolation is also done in require? For example

require mgc.$SITE

DIMENSIONS?

Only one version of a particular dimension can be active on one time. For example, if you have a set of envy files like this:

skylark-1.1.env
skylark-1.2.env
boomhopper-3.1.env
boomhopper-3.2.env

Set up 'skylark' as one dimension and 'boomhopper' as another. Then you can mix versions but you can't have two versions of 'boomhopper' active at once.

ARE THERE ANY TOOLS SIMILAR TO ENVY?

Envy shares some ideas with www.modules.org. That is the only similar tool I know of.

HOW DO I TEST NEW .ENV FILES?

Put them in $HOME/.envy/. This directory is always in envy's search path.

WHAT IS WRAPPER?

Wrapper is for crontab. It makes testing crontab entries very easy:

env -i /path/to/bin/wrapper -m prod myenv -s 'script...'

WHAT IF USERS ARE RESISTING?

echo echo *** Welcome to Big Company! echo echo 1. If you are a developer, you might like to be in 'dev' by default: echo echo dev > $HOME/.custom/startup echo echo 2. If you write crontab scripts, make sure they can run like this: echo env -i $ETOP/bin/wrapper -s 'script...' echo echo We realize this is a bit confusing. If you have any questions, echo please don't hesitate to voice your concerns or questions to echo Sasha or Joshua. echo echo WE FEEL THAT THE ENVY SYSTEM MEETS THE REQUIREMENTS IN THE echo SIMPLEST POSSIBLE MANNER. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR PATIENCE. echo

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN .ENV FILE AND A .MO FILE?

.mo is the old extension. Otherwise they are identical.

THANKS

A big thanks to Tony.Parent@symbios.com and Jerry.Hoffman@symbios.com for motivating this FAQ by asking many questions!