USE(1)

💖 USE 💖

okay bestie, we're talking about use — the frontend to the Usepackage Environment Manager — and honestly? she's the friend who keeps your whole shell life together. no cap. 👑

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

first you gotta source her into your shell, and which one you use depends on which shell you're living in:

csh and derivatives:
        source /usr/share/usepackage/use.csh

bourne shell and derivatives:
        source /usr/share/usepackage/use.bsh

korn shell:
        . /usr/share/usepackage/use.ksh

then, once she's loaded up, this is the actual vibe:

use [-vs] [-f file] package ...

use -l

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so Usepackage is an environment management program, and her whole thing is built on the principle of packages — which are literally just collections of executables that share a common set of necessary environment variables. we're talking PATH, MANPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, the whole crew. 🫶

for each package you hand her, use sources the appropriate environment information into your current shell. where does that info come from? a configuration file, obviously. see usepackage(1) for the deets, iykyk.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -v — she'll output verbose information to the standard error stream. it's giving chatty and we love that for her. 💬
• -s — silences warnings for un-matched packages. this is highkey useful in a shell rc script when a package is known not to be available on all architectures that the shell is used on. like, she's not gonna yell at you for something that was never there, periodt. 🤫
• -f file — specify an alternate initial configuration file. use a placeholder for file, she's flexible bestie.
• -l — list available packages and groups. window shopping, but make it environment variables. 🛍️

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📁 FILES 📁

these are the literal addresses of everything she touches, no notes:

• /usr/share/usepackage/usepackage.conf — the default configuration file. the main character of configs. 👑
• /usr/share/usepackage/use.csh — shell setup for csh and derivatives.
• /usr/share/usepackage/use.bsh — shell setup for bourne shell and derivatives.
• /usr/share/usepackage/use.ksh — shell setup for ksh.
• /usr/bin/usepackage — the underlying Usepackage executable. the girl behind the girl. 💅

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

okay so besides reading and re-defining environment variables for package setup, use also uses these environment variables for user configuration:

• PACKAGES_PATH — a colon-separated path list giving the directories to search for configuration files. shell-style tilde (~) user-directory escapes are expanded. yes, the tilde works. she's got you. 🏠
• HOME — if it's present in the environment, this is used to provide the expansion for the tilde (~) user-directory.
• SHELL — if it's present in the environment, the last path component of this is used for shell matching (peep the SYNTAX section) and for detecting the style of environment output that should be used. see usepackage(1) for more.

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📜 COPYRIGHT 📜

Usepackage Environment Manager Copyright (C) 1995-2020 Jonathan Hogg <me@jonathanhogg.com>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

usepackage(1), csh(1), sh(1), ksh(1)

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and that's the whole page bestie 💖 she's from the Usepackage era, dated $Date$, and this was USE(1) from the User Commands girlies. go forth and source responsibly. 🎀✨🦋