NAME

Envy - A comprehensive multi-dimensional environment manager

SYNOPSIS

Installation takes a bit more work beyond simply typing 'make'. Big returns sometimes involve negotiating big obstacles. Sorry!

FIRST TIME USERS

To install envy, you need to determine the type of your login shell. In the Unix world, there are mainly two types of shells. You can find out which one you have with:

echo $SHELL

The following cover installation for both types of shells:

INSTALLING

• SH, KSH, BASH, ZSH, Etc.

  envy() { eval `envy.pl $*`; }

• CSH, TCSH, Etc.

  alias envy 'envy.pl -csh \!* > /tmp/t$$; source /tmp/t$$; /bin/rm -f /tmp/t$$'

Now type 'envy help'. You should see a menu of help options.

Full installation is not exactly straightforward. To integrate envy into your facilities, see the examples in etc/login. You should be able to cut & paste to get things going. I hope to have better documentation in the future!

WHY AM I GOING THROUGH ALL THIS HELL?

Because envy could solve some of your long standing, tenacious problems!

• REUSE

  Envy allows the centralization of configuration files. When new versions of software come out, it is easy to globally publish new configuration files in preparation for gradual, controlled migration. Instead of being locked into backward compatibility, you can gently nudge users into change.

• CHOICE

  Each user can customize their environment exactly to the degree they want instead of being forced into a global environment or splintering into an entirely custom (home directory based :-) setup.

• DEPENDENCIES

  Envy makes dependencies between packages explicit and visible.

• STARTING APPLICATIONS

  The 'launche' script makes it easy to isolate application configuration while logging usage and environment dependencies.

• CRON JOBS

  Envy makes it easy to set up cron jobs. Cron jobs no longer fail unexpectedly due to missing environment variables since you can test them with 'launche'.

ENVY SETUP

Hopefully, you will find envy very easy to set up for your site. Before you 'make install', be sure check ./Conf.pm.

EXTENSION API

Envy is written entirely in perl and is designed to be used as a library as well as a command-line tool. One possible project is a graphical front end to help navigate the environment. Also see the TODO file.

SUPPORT

Send email to envy@listbox.com.

SEE ALSO

For a comparison of unix shells:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/shell-differences/index.html

And for why you should *not* do shell programming in csh:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/