VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 12 2011 - 09:04:37 CDT

Hi,

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 02:14:36PM +0300, Anssi Nurminen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm new to VMD and I'm developing a Tcl plugin. I'd have a few question
> about best practises.
>
> -Is there a way to vmd_uninstall_extension or to vmd_reload_extension?
> Currently whenever I make changes I need to restart VMD to be able to
> get my plugin reloaded (reinstalled).

No, but you can manually "source" the newly modified script file(s)
and that will have the effect of updating the code on-the-fly.

> -What are the VMD-community pages and how do I access them?

They are pages maintained as a subdirectory of the VMD Public project
on BioCoRE. You can edit/create such pages, as well as various
alpha/beta versions of VMD by following the instructions here:
  http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/alpha/

> -How do I turn on VMD's debugging mode? should I use it?

If you're not working on modifying the C/C++ code, then there's
no need to run VMD within a debugger. If you're working on Tcl scripts,
then you may find the "logfile" command useful.

> -Other helpful tips for debugging Tcl-plugins?

Try and test your procedures individually and be sure you've exercised
entire range of input parameters. Since Tcl is interpreted at run-time,
it is possible to have errors in a script and not realize it until
a particular combination of parameters trigger a particular section of
code to be run that isn't usually exercised.

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
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078