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Most tools rely on the values of several environment variables to load other tools, to find files and to force operating system dependent actions. The table below summarises this information.
Windows specific: The notion environment variable includes the registry entries under the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\SiG\VisualEiffel.
Table 1. Enironment variables
Environment variable | Purpose and content |
---|---|
VE_Bin | A path (without trailing slash) of the directory where the binaries are located. The path is used to find required executables. It's also a default path to find the fixed information required by the executables, such as texts of error messages. |
VE_Data | A path that points to the directory where the tools should keep internal data. |
VE_Lib | A path to the Visual Eiffel™ libraries. |
VE_OS | A current operating system. The possible values include Win32 and Linux. |
Almost any tool requires some kind of input files that are common for the given tool. For example, this include the files with the error messages to be displayed.
The tools use the same strategy to find the required files. They look in the following directories in the following order:
Example 1. Error message file for gargs tool
gargs requires file gargs.vem, that keeps all the error messages of the tool. By default, this file is placed in the directory $VE_Bin. A user may want to change the error messages in a way that does not affect other users. Assuming that the environment variable VE_Data is different for different users, the modified version of the file gargs.vem can be safely placed in the directory $VE_Data and gargs would use this version instead of the default one.