Tycho under Unix

  1. Setup
  2. Stand-alone Execution
  3. Executing Tycho with Ptolemy
  4. Customizing Tycho on Startup

External Unix Tcl places to go

  • Tycho distribution at UC Berkeley
  • Itcl homepage
  • Tcl and Itcl Internet Resources
  • Building Tcl Extensions
  • Tycho is designed to be used as a stand-alone program or in conjunction with the Ptolemy system. The Ptolemy system is a heterogeneous design environment developed at U.C. Berkeley. We do most of our development under Solaris 2.5.1, so Tycho will probably work best under that operating system.

    Setup

    To setup Tycho under Unix, you will need to download Tycho from the Tycho home page at http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/tycho/Tycho.html. The Tycho home page has a link to the download page that contains Tycho sources and Itcl binaries for certain Unix platforms.

    Tycho 0.2.1 will not work with versions of Itcl earlier than Itcl 2.2, which is the version shipped with Ptolemy 0.7 and Ptolemy 0.7.1.

    To check the version number of Tycho, look at the startup screen that has the 'Mr. Tycho' bitmap. The startup screen can be brought up by selecting the Help menu in the upper right side and then selecting About. You can also type

    puts $TychoVersionInfo
    
    into a Tycho console. (If you are running Tycho, you can just mouse on the Tcl command above and the version information will be printed in the console window).

    You will also need to have the tycho/bin directory in your path. In addition, you will need to set an environment variable TYCHO to point to the installation directory for Tycho.

    For example, if Tycho is installed in /usr/tools/tycho and Itcl is installed in /usr/tools/itcl/bin, then you could put the following lines in your .cshrc file (assuming you use csh):

        set path = (/usr/tools/tycho/bin /usr/tools/itcl/bin $path)
        setenv TYCHO /usr/tools/tycho
    
    The TYCHO environment variable can also be used to control which of several versions of Tycho you run, if you have more than one version installed on your system.

    Tycho includes HTML documentation of the Itcl classes that make up Tycho. In Tycho 0.2 and earlier, these files (located in the doc/codeDoc directory) were not shipped with the distribution and had to be installed. In Tycho 0.2.1, these files are shipped in the Tycho tar file, so there is no need to build them by hand.

    The Tycho/Ptolemy CGC interface requires compilation of C files. To build this package, run

    cd $TYCHO
    make tclexts
    

    See Building Tcl Extensions for more information.

    Standalone Execution

    To start up Tycho standalone (independent of Ptolemy), the command-line syntax is:

        tycho [-nowelcome] [-noconsole] [-debug] [-tty] [-e tclfile] [file...]
    
    All arguments and options are optional. One or more file names may be optionally specified as arguments. If you specify one or more files, those files will be opened by Tycho. Tycho will exit when you close all windows. If you do not specify any files, Tycho opens with a Tcl console window. You can type Tcl, Tk, or Itcl commands into this console window. You may also open other files from this window. Exiting this console window will exit the program. This console window also captures standard output generated with the Tcl puts command, unless that output is directed to a file.
    -nowelcome
    Start Tycho without displaying the welcome window. This is particularly useful if you are running over a slow X connection (like a modem) and do not wish to waste the bandwidth. The slow network System preference can also be set to modify the behaviour of Tycho over a slow network.
    -noconsole
    Do not open a console window.
    -debug
    Start itkwish inside the Gnu gdb debugger.
    -tty
    Start a non-graphical version of Tycho that runs in the current xterm or shell window.
    -e tclfile
    Start up and source tclfile. Note that at startup time, ~/.Tycho/tychorc.tcl is also sourced. See Customizing Tycho on Startup for more information.

    Executing Tycho with Ptolemy

    If you are running Ptolemy version 0.6 or higher, then Tycho is already running when you run the user interface pigi. You can obtain a Tycho console window by typing a y while the mouse cursor is over a vem facet or palette. You can also run Tycho with the Ptolemy textual interpreter, ptcl. The command-line syntax for this is:

        tycho [-debug] [-ptiny|-ptrim|-pigi|-bin tychobin] \
              [-nowelcome] [-noconsole] [file...]
    
    All options and arguments are optional. The options are interpreted as follows:
    -debug
    Start a version of Ptolemy with debugging symbols, if one is available.
    -ptiny
    Start a minimal version of Ptolemy with only the SDF, DE, and HOF domains.
    -ptrim
    Start an intermediate version of Ptolemy with a few of the most useful domains (SDF, BDF, DDF, DE, CGC, and HOF).
    -pigi
    Start a large version of Ptolemy with all domains.
    -bin tychobin
    Start a particular, specified executable.
    -nowelcome
    Do not open the initial welcome window.
    -noconsole
    Do not open a console window.
    file...
    Open the specified files after starting the program.

    Notice that the -ptiny, -ptrim, -pigi, -bin options are mutually exclusive.

    In Ptolemy 0.7 and later, -pigi, -ptrim, -ptiny uses the pitcl interface to the kernel rather than the ptcl interface. See the pitcl documentation for further information.

    If no files are specified, then the program opens with a Tcl console window into which you can type Tcl, Tk, or Itcl commands. Exiting this console window will exit the program (after confirmation). If you do specify files, then closing all open windows will exit the program. In either case, you can also exit the program with the Quit command in any File menu.

    The directory $TYCHO/typt contains the Ptolemy specific Tycho features. The typt User's Guides documentation is a good starting point.

    Customizing Tycho on Startup

    You can configure Tycho to execute some Tcl code on startup. Simply create a directory called .Tycho in your home directory and a file called tychorc.tcl in that directory. That file will automatically be sourced on startup. Note that the .Tycho directory is used to store other state information for Tycho, such as your personal dictionary for spelling checks.

    Note that upon startup ptcl sources ~/.ptclrc and pigi sources ~/.ptkrc.

    Up to: Tycho Introduction - Previous: Release Notes - Next: Troubleshooting Tycho - Tycho Home Page


    Copyright © 1996-1998, The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
    Last updated: 06/08/98, comments to: tycho@eecs.berkeley.edu