README

MiscTools is a collection of small but useful utilities. Most of
these are built on top of the cbase library so you will need that
library in order to compile them. You can get cbase from:

http://www.hyperrealm.com/cbase/

After installing cbase, make sure the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment
variable contains the path to the lib/pkgconfig subdirectory of the
cbase installation. This will allow the misctools configure script to
find the cbase libraries and headers automatically.

Some of these programs also need the ncurses library, which you can
get from:

http://www.gnu.org/

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See the INSTALL file for generic installation instructions. Typically,
the steps required are:

./configure
make
su root
make install

Documentation (in the form of postscript files) is in the doc/
subdirectory. The same documentation (as unformatted manpages) exists
in each of the utility directories (and will be installed in the
appropriate man directory).

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I wrote `pkgenv' because of my dissatisfaction with the "Environment
Modules" package, of which I've been a longtime user.

One of the problems with Modules is its dependency on Tcl. Every time
I wanted to set up Modules on a new machine, I was forced to download
and install Tcl, and then tell the Modules configure script where to
find it. Extremely irritating. I also have absolutely no interest in
learning Tcl, so the scripting capability of Modules was lost on me.

The second problem is that the modulefiles were annoying to write--I
wanted a simpler format with less redundant information.

And so pkgenv was born. It works great for me, and the binary is only
about 12K in size. If you don't need the complexity that Modules
offers and/or don't want to mess around with Tcl, it might work well
for you too.

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25 Aug 2007
Mark Lindner