This isn't specifically a Scientific Linux question, but I suspect many of the list's readers are in the same boat as me. We have about 30 scientific packages, of which about 20 are command-line only and about 10 are GUI applications. Rather than have massive, slow, and unmaintainable .cshrc/.bashrc files, people use an application called "prepare" to set up each app as necessary. "prepare" originally came from Johan Postma at EMBL Heidelberg and unfortunately its website seems to have disappeared. It's a clever csh script which detects the architecture in use and then sources an appropriate csh file to set up environment variables and aliases. Originally it worked with IRIX and OSF/1, and when Linux came on the scene I made the necessary modifications. The idea is that "prepare ccp4" will set up the CCP4 package for whatever type of computer a user is currently using: SGI, Tru64 Alpha, Linux Alpha, Linux x86, or Linux AMD64. Simply typing "prepare" gives a list of applications currently configured for the computer in use.
This has worked well, but I haven't revisited this issue in 15 years and am wondering how the rest of the scientific world solves this problem. All comments welcomed. Matt UCSF
