Provided by: usepackage_1.8-1_amd64 
NAME
usepackage - Usepackage Environment Manager
SYNOPSIS
See use(1).
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 packages files, see PACKAGES.
The usepackage executable is the backend program used to generate environment information suitable for
sourcing into a running shell. The use frontend should be invoked to actually effect changes to the
environment, see use(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, see PACKAGES.
-c Force csh style environment output.
-b Force bourne shell style environment output.
-f file
Specify an alternate initial configuration file, see PACKAGES.
-l List available packages and groups, see ANNOTATIONS and GROUPS.
PACKAGES
Usepackage reads package environment information from the configuration file as follows:
LOAD ORDER
When Usepackage starts up, it loads an initial configuration file, the name of this file may be given on
the command line (see OPTIONS), otherwise it defaults to the builtin name "usepackage.conf" (see FILES).
This file is located by searching along a path which defaults to:
/usr/etc:~:.
This path may be overridden with the PACKAGES_PATH environment variable (see ENVIRONMENT). A packages
file may contain inclusion directives which cause the sourcing of other files at given points. An
inclusion directive looks like:
(include file-name)
The same location mechanism is used to find "file-name" as for the initial configuration file. A package
file name may also be given as an absolute file name or may be shell-style user directory, tilde (~),
relative.
SYNTAX
A package file consists of comments, delimited by a leading hash (#), or package definitions of the form:
package [arch [os [version [host [shell]]]]]
[<= requires ...] : setting [, setting ...] ;
The package, arch, os, version, host, and shell parts may be simple shell-style patterns of the form:
* matches anything.
foo* matches "foo", "foobar" etc.
{foo,bar} matches "foo" or "bar".
The requires list specifies the names of other packages which must be sourced into the environment before
the settings for this package are processed.
A setting is either a variable definition (as described below) or a section of text to be directly
evaluated in the shell, delimited with <[ and ]>, for example:
<[ /usr/local/bin/test-init ]>
When Usepackage searches for the definition for a particular package, it compares each line in the
packages file against the name of the package given (package) and system-dependant information for the
execution host, as obtained by uname(2). This information is the hardware implementation (platform), the
operating system name (os), the operating system version (version) and the hostname (host). Comparisons
are case-insensitive. If a match is obtained then the given variable definitions and script sections are
processed to modify the environment. A variable definition may have one of the following forms:
var-name = "string"
var-name = path-list
var-name += path-list
var-name += "string"
The first sets the given variable to a literal string value, the second sets the given variable to a path
list, the third prepends the current value of a variable with the given path list, and the fourth
interprets the literal string as a path list and prepends it to the current value of the variable. Path
lists are colon (:) separated lists of directories and may contain shell-style tilde (~), user-relative,
directories which will be expanded automatically (except when the path list is given as a literal
string). When pre-pending paths to a variable, duplicate paths are removed from the original value first.
In addition, Usepackage can optionally test for the existence of paths before setting or adding them to
variables. This is done with the test form of the above operators:
var-name ?= path-list
var-name ?+= path-list
var-name ?+= "string"
These operate as per the definitions above, but will ignore path components that don't exist.
GROUPS
In addition to the package definitions in a packages file, there may also be group definitions. These
have the following syntax:
group := package [, package ...] ;
Usepackage searches for a given package name in the defined groups first, if the given name matchs a
group name then the packages defined as part of that group are sourced into the environment together. A
group definition may not reference other groups and may not contain patterns.
ANNOTATIONS
In order to give useful package information to the user, annotations may be placed in the packages file
that give summaries of packages. These annotations have the form:
>> name : "description" <<
Usepackage collects these annotations together and displays them when called with the -l flag, see
OPTIONS. These annotations have no impact on the package mechanism and need not necessarily be beside or
correspond to the package definitions (although this is the sensible way to arrange things).
EXAMPLE
The following fragment of a packages file illustrates the main features:
# GNU software is available everywhere:
>> GNU : "The GNU project software" <<
GNU : PATH += /usr/local/gnu/bin,
MANPATH += /usr/local/gnu/man ;
# CVS requires RCS which is found in the GNU package, but
# is only available on SPARC Solaris machines:
>> CVS : "Concurrent Versions System revision control" <<
CVS sun4* SunOS 5.* <= GNU :
CVSROOT = /usr/src/cvsroot,
CVSEDITOR = "vi",
PATH += /usr/local/cvs/bin,
MANPATH += /usr/local/cvs/man ;
# User bin directories (Solaris will run SunOS 4 binaries):
# (Only added to the path if the directories actually exist)
>> user : "User's own programs" <<
user sun4* SunOS : PATH ?+= ~/bin/sun4 ;
user sun4* SunOS 5.* : PATH ?+= ~/bin/solaris ;
user alpha OSF : PATH ?+= ~/bin/alpha ;
# Special function for zsh:
>> zsh-function : "Special zsh function" <<
zsh-function * * * * zsh :
<[ hello() { echo "Hello World!"; } ]> ;
# include standard packages:
(include packages.standard)
# security hole:
dot : PATH += . ;
# groups:
user-setup := standard, user ;
programmer-setup := standard, CVS, user, dot ;
Note the use of Operating System version numbers to distinguish between SunOS 4 and Solaris (SunOS 5),
the use of "sun4*" to match the multiple different platform versions of SPARC machines (sun4m, sun4c,
etc.) and the fact that package "user" on a SPARC Solaris machine will match both of the first two lines
of the "user" package section, resulting in the "solaris" directory and the "sun4" directory being added
into the PATH.
Assuming the appropriate shell setup script has been sourced - see use(1) - then the following command
will cause the CVS environment (including the GNU environment) to be sourced:
$ use CVS
Note that on a DEC Alpha machine, this will generate a warning like:
$ use CVS
warning: no match for package `CVS' on this host.
In a shell script which is executed on a number of different platforms (such as the shell startup
script). These warnings may be silenced (see OPTIONS).
FILES
/usr/share/usepackage/usepackage.conf
The default master packages 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
OPTIONS).
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
use(1), csh(1), sh(1), ksh(1), env(1), environ(5), getenv(3C), uname(1), uname(2)