ENVV Envv is a shell-independent way of handling environment variables. It lets you set environment variables, and manipulate colon-separated paths in an easy, shell-independent way. This makes writing setup scripts for softare products a snap. Instead of users hard-coding initialization steps in their .cshrc or .profile files, they can source system-wide files. Then, if you ever move any software packages, users don't have any problem. For example, suppose the commercial software packaged FOOBAR requires '/usr/local/foobar/bin' to be on the user's path, and requires the environment variable 'FOOHOME' to be set to '/usr/local/foobar' Just create the following script: eval `envv add PATH /usr/local/foobar/bin` eval `envv set FOOHOME /usr/local/foobar` Then, users of csh, tcsh, bash, sh or ksh can simply source the script, and everything will work fine. BUILDING ENVV Envv is a ridiculously simple program. You may want to glance at the first few lines of envv.c, and take a look at the Makefile. But all you should have to to do compile it is type 'make'. This makes the executable 'envv', which you can copy to your favourite system directory. The manual page is in 'envv.1' CHANGES TO ENVV: * Version 1.6 (11 July 1995) + Bug fixes - Fixed the path comparison function. The old version would incorrectly match /u/share and /usr/foo because the trailing-slash logic was confused. Thanks to Caleb Epstein for finding and reporting the bug. * Version 1.5 + Bug fixes - Made directives case-insensitive (suggested by Steve Shoopak.) - Changed the definition of MAX_VAL_LEN from 256 to 2048 to allow for very long paths. * Version 1.4 (10 May 1994) + Bug fixes - If a set command was followed by add/move/del commands on stdin, it didn't work -- the results of the set were not saved in envv's environment. * Version 1.3 (10 May 1994) + Bug fixes - I was freeing a string after sending it to putenv(). Bad news. This patch fixes that. * Version 1.2 (18 April 1994) + Enhancements - Added the "local" directive to set variables without exporting them to the environment. - Added the '-e', -h' and '-s' options. - If no directives are supplied on command line, envv reads directives from stdin and issues commands based on those directives. Directives on stdin should be supplied one-per-line. + Bug fixes - Fixed up the usage display to show the "choose" directive, which had been missing. * Version 1.1 (22 March 1994) + Enhancements - Modified the path manipulation commands so that trailing slashes do not affect comparison of directories. That is, foo/bar/ and foo/bar are considered the same. - Added the 'zsh' shell to the list of shells envv recognizes. - Added the 'choose' directive -- see the man page. * Version 1.0 (8 Feb 1994) - First version. -- David F. Skoll 986 Eiffel Avenue Ottawa, Ontario K2C 0J2 Canada (613) 225-8687 <dfs@doe.carleton.ca> <aa775@freenet.carleton.ca>
