NAME

       use - Frontend to the Usepackage Environment Manager

SYNOPSIS

       csh and derivatives:
               source /usr/share/usepackage/use.csh

       bourne shell and derivatives:
               source /usr/share/usepackage/use.bsh

       korn shell:
               . /usr/share/usepackage/use.ksh

       use [-vs] [-f file] package ...

       use -l

DESCRIPTION

       Usepackage  is an environment management program. It is based on the principle of packages
       - collections of executables that share a common set of necessary  environment  variables,
       such as PATH, MANPATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

       For  each  given  package,  use  sources  the appropriate environment information into the
       current shell.  The environment information is specified  in  a  configuration  file,  see
       usepackage(1).

   OPTIONS
       -v     Output verbose information to the standard error stream.

       -s     Silence  warnings for un-matched packages. This is useful in a shell rc script when
              a package is known not to be available on all architectures that the shell is  used
              on.

       -f file
              Specify an alternate initial configuration file.

       -l     List available packages and groups.

FILES

       /usr/share/usepackage/usepackage.conf
                      The default configuration file.

       /usr/share/usepackage/use.csh
                      Shell setup for csh and derivatives.

       /usr/share/usepackage/use.bsh
                      Shell setup for bourne shell and derivatives.

       /usr/share/usepackage/use.ksh
                      Shell setup for ksh.

       /usr/bin/usepackage
                      The underlying Usepackage executable.

ENVIRONMENT

       Other  than  the reading and re-definition of environment variables for package setup, use
       also uses the following environment variables for user configuration:

       PACKAGES_PATH  Colon-separated  path  list  giving   the   directories   to   search   for
                      configuration  files.  Shell-style  tilde  (~)  user-directory  escapes are
                      expanded.

       HOME           If present in the environment, this is used to provide  the  expansion  for
                      the tilde (~) user-directory.

       SHELL          If  present in the environment, the last path component of this is used for
                      shell matching (see SYNTAX) and detecting the style of  environment  output
                      that should be used, see usepackage(1).

COPYRIGHT

       Usepackage Environment Manager
       Copyright (C) 1995-2005  Jonathan Hogg

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the GNU General Public License as  published  by  the  Free  Software  Foundation;  either
       version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

       This  program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
       without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR  PURPOSE.
       See the GNU General Public License for more details.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program;
       if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite  330,  Boston,
       MA  02111-1307  USA

SEE ALSO

       usepackage(1), csh(1), sh(1), ksh(1)