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Running Tycho

  1. Setup
  2. Standalone Execution
  3. Executing Tycho with Ptolemy
  4. Debugging Tycho with Ptolemy

Tycho is designed to be used as a standlone program or on conjunction with the Ptolemy system. The Ptolemy system is a heterogeneous design environment developed at U.C. Berkeley.

Setup

If you are set up to run Ptolemy version 0.6 or higher, then you are already set up to run Tycho. If you do not have Ptolemy installed on your system, or are not set up to run Ptolemy, then you must have the program "itkwish" in your path. This program is a generic Itcl shell. You must be running Itcl version 2.0 or higher. 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, then you could put the following line in your .cshrc file:

    setenv TYCHO /usr/tools/tycho
This 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] [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. 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.

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.

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.


Copyright © 1996, The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Last updated: 96/04/11 comments to: eal@eecs.berkeley.edu