Setting environment variables from within TCL script

tcl environment-variables
Attiq picture Attiq · Apr 17, 2015 · Viewed 19.3k times · Source

I was creating a Tcl script which will allow me to automate the installation of software. But the problem I am running into is that the software needs some environment variables set beforehand and I was wondering if its possible to set environment variables inside of the tcl script.

I was going to try exec /bin/sh -c "source /path/to/.bash_profile but that would create a shell script and source the variables into there and the tcl script wont pick it up then.

Can anyone give any other ideas?

Answer

glenn jackman picture glenn jackman · Apr 17, 2015

In Tcl you have the global env array:

set ::env(foo) bar

And then any child process has the variable foo in its environment.

If you want to put environment variables in a central file (i.e. .bash_profile) so that other programs can source them, then it should be pretty easy to get Tcl to parse that file and set the variables in the env array.

Related questions

How to print all environment variables in TCL?

In TCL, how can I print all environment variables using a single line command?

Read More
How to make a GUI for bash scripts?

I want to make some graphical dialogs for my script but don't know how. I hear something about GTK-Server or something like that. If someone knows how to link Bash with tcl/tk I also be satisfied. Please do not …

Read More
Waiting for background processes to finish before exiting script

How do I make sure that all my background processes have finished execution before I exit my script (TCL/Bash). I was thinking of writing all my background process pids to a pidfile. And then at the end pgrep the …

Read More