[GRASS-user] Original location: How to create from the command line ?

[Glynn Clements]

Hamish wrote:

> Moritz:
> > I imagine that you can create your own location by having a
> > script create the location directory, the PERMANENT mapset
> > directory and the PROJ_INFO, DEFAULT_WIND and PROJ_UNITS
> > files, or ?

You can. It would be easier to use an existing location, although this
gets problematic for concurrent use. OTOH, a script could just make
the top-level directory then extract the files from a tar/zip/etc
file.

> So what we need is a wrapper script that will create a dummy location/
> mapset in /tmp/ and run 'grass64 + g.proj -c' via a GRASS_BATCH_JOB (be
> it .sh or .py).

Not really. The grass64 script should be reserved for interactive
startup. Scripts should set up their environment themselves; it isn't
rocket science.

> Any hints on how the man page parts of the build process
> accomplish this?

It points GISRC at the dist.<arch>/demolocation/.grassrc64 file, which
uses dist.<arch>/demolocation/PERMANENT as the mapset.

> To give access to g.parser, could the enviro vars be set up at the start
> of the script so the thing could bootstrap itself? ie can we somehow
> find a way to use the GRASS parser from the non-GRASS command line? I'm
> guessing this is not easy due to the 2-pass way g.parser works, but a
> smart devel might be able to make it happen somehow.

Just set the environment variables.

Personally, I suggest packaging GRASS so that the environment
variables are set system wide from e.g. /etc/env.d/90grass (or
whatever mechanism a particular distribution uses for package-specific
environment settings). Users would only need to run the grass64 script
if they wanted to start a second session.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>