Tycho under Unix

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

External Unix Tcl places to go

  • Tycho distribution at UC Berkeley
  • Itcl homepage
  • Tcl and Itcl Internet Resources
  • Tycho is designed to be used as a stand-alone program or on 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 Solaris2.5, 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 has a link to the downloads page that contains Tycho sources and Itcl binaries for certain Unix platforms.

    Tycho0.1.1 will not work with Itcl2.0, which is the version shipped with Ptolemy0.6. To use Tycho0.1.1, you must have Itcl2.1 or Itcl2.2 installed

    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 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.

    Standalone Execution

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

        tycho [-nowelcome] [-noconsole] [-debug] [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. If you give the -nowelcome option, then you will not get the startup 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 -debug option will bring up itkwish inside the Gnu GDB debugger.

    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 with the key binding "y". 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, and -bin options are mutually exclusive. 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.

    Debugging Tycho with Ptolemy

    Since Ptolemy is a fundamentally extensible system, Tycho running with Ptolemy has special features to allow experimentation and debugging. One feature is that it traps segmentation faults and related errors that cause the program to crash, and attempts to save any unsaved work before exiting. Of course, there is no guarantee that this will work, so files are saved with the prefix "#crash#". When the file is reopened Tycho will check to see if a #crash# file exists, and if it does, give the user the option of opening it.

    Customizing Tycho on Startup

    You can configure Tycho to execute some Tcl code on startup. Simply create a directory called .Tychoin 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.

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


    Copyright © 1996, The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
    Last updated: 96/11/17, comments to: tycho@eecs.berkeley.edu