• 1.3.1 Creating a pigiRpc that includes your own stars
• 1.3.2 Creating a pigiRpc with more extensive customizations

The Ptolemy kernel and vem (the schematic editor) run in separate Unix processes. The Ptolemy kernel process is called "pigiRpc", while the vem process is called "vem". You can create your own version of pigiRpc that contains your stars and other extensions permanently linked in.

There are at least three ways to build your own pigiRpc, depending on the kind of extensions you are making. The first way uses src/pigiExample, and it is intended for users who just need to add new stars. The second and third ways use the mkPtolemyTree script and csh aliases and are for users that are creating new domains or making other more extensive changes.

If you want to extend Ptolemy by modifying or adding a new scheduler, target, or even an entire domain, it is recommended that you create a duplicate directory hierarchy. This allows you to experiment with and fully test any changes separately, rather than incorporating them into the "official" version of Ptolemy. This way, your experimentation will not interfere with other Ptolemy users at your site, and your changes will not be overwritten by future installations of Ptolemy releases. It also means that all of the existing makefiles will work without modification because all of the paths specified are relative to the root of the hierarchy.

The most direct way to do this is to copy the entire Ptolemy hierarchy. This could be done with a command such as:

1.3.1 Creating a pigiRpc that includes your own stars

In the example below, we assume that $PTOLEMY and $PTARCH are set and that you have write permission to the Ptolemy source tree. If you don't have write permission, you can set up a parallel tree with the Unix ln -s command. If, for example, the Ptolemy tree was at
/users/ptolemy, but you wanted to build under ~/pt, you could do the following to create the directory and create symbolic links for the dot files, like .cshrc, and create symbolic links for the other files and directories in the distribution:

Continuing with our example of how to build a pigiRpc that includes your own stars:

1. Build a basic pigiRpc. PigiRpc depends on .o files under $PTOLEMY/obj.$PTARCH, so you must do a basic build. To build all the .o files, type:

The complete build process can take upwards of three hours. If you use an override.mk file, you can reduce the build time by building only the functionality you need. See "Using mkPtolemyTree to create a custom Ptolemy trees" on page 1-9 for more information.

2. Edit $PTOLEMY/src/pigiExample/make.template. Add your stars to LOCAL_OBJS and PL_SRCS.

3. cd to $PTOLEMY/obj.$PTARCH/pigiExample and type:

to update the makefile from the make.template. You will see messages something like:

This is normal and you may safely ignore the error message.

4. While still in $PTOLEMY/obj.$PTARCH/pigiExample, type

This will create a version of the pigiRpc executable with your own stars statically linked in. If later you add a new star, you should modify the symbols OBJS and PLSRCS in make.template to include it, and repeat the above procedure.

5. If you built your pigiRpc with SDFMyStar.o, you can test your pigiRpc by starting up with:

and then run the `wave' universe. If you want to have the binary you just built be the default binary for yourself, you can set your PIGIRPC environment variable to the name of the binary you just built:

Next time you start pigi, your new executable will be used instead of the standard one. To revert to using the installed pigiRpc, just type

6. If you want your pigiRpc to be the default pigiRpc, you can install it in $PTOLEMY/bin.$PTARCH, but this will wipe out whatever pigiRpc is in that directory With the same makefile, you can make a version of the pigiRpc program that has debug symbols. Just type:

1.3.2 Creating a pigiRpc with more extensive customizations

Warning: If you have write permission in the directory where Ptolemy is installed, make sure to modify the place where "make install" puts the completed executable, or it will attempt to overwrite the pigiRpc in the Ptolemy installation, and other users may be upset with you if you succeed in doing that. (If you are using the makefile from $PTOLEMY/src/pigiExample, you do not need to worry about this because "make install" has been removed from that makefile.) The simplest thing to do is to replace the line in the makefile: