[GRASS-dev] GRASS init.sh

[David Finlayson]

On 6/12/06, Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com> wrote:

> The only environment variable set in grass61 is GISBASE. That has to
> be set there because the rest of GRASS (including Init.sh) is
> referenced relative to $GISBASE.
>
> > 2. Many system-wide environment variables are determined at run-time
> > by init.sh. This means that there is a lot of platform specific code
> > looking for libraries and executables. Routines are different for each
> > shell and each major platform. Surely there is a better way to do
> > this? Maybe a configuration wizard that helps the user write or update
> > their system-wide config file?
>
> Different users may have different values for $SHELL and $PATH.
> Init.sh needs to work for all users, not one specific configuration.

I guess my point is this:

It was fine to put configuration information in the init script when
there was effectively only 1 type of shell. Now that we are
considering alternative environments for GRASS such as Java or Python
or R or DOS, etc. it would be nice to get the configuration
information into a proper config file. That way the configuration
(static info about GRASS) is separated from the initialization process
(unique to each environment/shell).