VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Jun 25 2009 - 01:06:02 CDT

Olaf,

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 07:52:39AM +0200, Olaf Lenz wrote:
[...]
> John Stone wrote:
> > I had to change the default behavior because some of the newer Linux
> > distributions created problems with finding shared libraries when VMD was
> > launched via xterm as it has been for so many years.
>
> Also, I would like to add that some distros don't even install xterm by
> default any more (e.g. (K)Ubuntu), as they use the KDE or GNOME
> terminals by default.

Yes, that's true, and indeed I've gotten quite a few emails regarding
that too over the years.

> Therefore, I think that the new behaviour is not as bad. Probably it
> would be a good idea to allow the old behaviour via a command line
> option? Maybe in that case one could even choose what terminal to use?

I think that the "alias" command is probably adequate for the purpose,
and there's no way to enable the old behavior on the distros that have
the previously mentioned behavior of nulling out the LD_LIBRARY_PATH
environment.

> Another issue in that context is that even csh is not installed by
> default on (K)Ubuntu. Maybe it would be useful to rewrite the script for
> the bourne shell (i.e. /bin/sh, not /bin/bash!), which is required by
> the POSIX standard as well as by the LSB, to make VMD more compatible?
> I would volounteer to do so, if you think it worthwhile.

Actually, Axel and I have already done this. It's included
in the recent beta versions and is installed automatically when
/bin/csh is not available. See the "vmd/bin/vmd.sh" in the CVS tree.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
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