Before you can start VAST Platform you may need to configure your installation.

Each user must specify a working directory to hold their working images when configuring their installation. The tool used is vast.Running the tool from the command line launches Environments. See VAST developer environment for more information.

The default configuration is for standalone with File I/O (you are NOT prompted to choose a different option during the installation).

The client is always installed as a standalone installation.

By default, the ServerAddress is the empty – indicating File I/O. This will only work if you are using a Client that is installed on the same computer as the Manager.

If you want to change your network configuration, the Smalltalk image start-up configuration file abt.ini will need to be modified. Specifically, you will need to verify that the [EmLibraryInterface] parameters, ServerAddress and DefaultName match your network configuration.

The system administrator of the server where the Manager was installed should provide you with these EmLibraryInterface parameters

The file abt.ini is located in the <varoot>/newimage. directory.

If you are working independently from other Smalltalk developers, you may want to configure your installation for standalone use. Under this configuration, both Client and Manager must be on the same machine, and only one development image can be connected to the library at any time.

The VAST Manager component uses a daemon to manage concurrent access to the library and import files. This program is named EMSRV.

To start the EMSRV process, do the following:

You do not have to be root to run emsrv. You do, however, need to have permission to create and update files in the emsrv logging directory as well as permission to modify the mgr1300.dat file itself. One approach to doing this is to explicitly specify a logging directory in which your user id is allowed to create and modify files.

Here is an example of starting emsrv such that client requests are logged in /var/emsrv-log. Also notice that we have directed stdout to /tmp/emsrv-log/emsrv.out (please note that /tmp/emsrv-log MUST exist before you start emsrv).

For more options on starting EMSRV, type emsrv -h at a command prompt. You can find complete instructions for configuring and using EMSRV at "EMSRV for Windows".

Each VAST developer requires certain files in their own working directory. The Environments tool provides a GUI for creating and managing your development environment.

VAST Platform installs a symbolic link in /usr/bin so you can simply execute vast to launch Environments. In case both 32bit and 64bit versions of VAST Platform are installed on the same machine, the link will point to the most recently installed version of Environments.

Environments copies the master abt.ini file to the working directory you specify. If the system administrator makes any additional changes to the master abt.ini file, the copy of abt.ini that is in your working directory will not match the master abt.ini in <varoot>/newimage. If you have not made any changes to your personal copy of abt.ini, then you can just copy the new master version from <varoot>/newimage into your image directory. Otherwise you will need to manually edit your personal copy of abt.ini to pick up any important new information from the master version of abt.ini.

More information on how to use Environments can be found at “Launching VAST with Environments”.

You can customize some of the default look and feel of your VAST development environment. This can be accomplished by placing an ENVY application defaults file into your home directory. A sample ENVY application defaults file can be found in the directory <varoot>/app-defaults. Copy this file to your home directory and then make changes to suit your tastes.

For example, changing the line:

to:

will cause lists to have a "Sky Blue" background the next time you start a development image.

Additional kinds of customization are possible, including the cutting and pasting of the ENVY file contents into your .Xdefaults file. You should consult your X documentation for details.

On Linux, the X-Windows directory structure may be extended during the product install process. The VAST X-lib support expects to find its files in the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 directory structure. However, most newer Linux distributions place their X-lib files under /usr/share/X11. The installer will create the needed directories and make the appropriate symbolic links between the 2 directory trees.

This section applies only to some Linux systems.

On Linux, the default locale may be UTF-8 which is not currently supported by VAST Platform. If this is the default locale, you will experience problems displaying and entering some characters specific to some (European) languages. The particular characters you will have problems with are characters with keysym (ASCII) values over 127, such as the umlauted vowels in German and the copyright (©) character.

When VAST Platform detects that the locale is an unsupported one, it will log the situation to the console. VAST Platform will use the C locale in this case.

On some versions of Linux we have found that, while the default locale may not be supported by VAST Platform, several supported locales are shipped with the operating system. On other versions, no suitable locale exists. Both situations are covered below.

In order to get characters in the upper range of the ASCII character set to display correctly, you must change the locale as outlined below.

At this point your system should be properly configured to run VAST Platform and have characters with keysym values over 127 such as umlauts and the copyright symbol display properly when typing in text widgets. The console log should no longer contain warnings about the locale.