5.2  Initialising the ECLⁱPS^e Subsystem

These are the Tcl commands needed to initialize an embedded ECLⁱPS^e.

ec_set_option option_name option_value

Set the value of an initialisation option for ECLⁱPS^e. This must be done before invoking ec_init. The available option_names are: localsize, globalsize, privatesize, sharedsize, default_module, eclipsedir, io. See Appendix A for their meaning.

ec_init ?peername?

Initialise the ECLⁱPS^e engine. This is required before any other commands of this interface (except ec_set_option) can be used. The optional argument peername is the name of the embedding peer, which defaults to ‘master’.

Example Tcl code for initialising ECLⁱPS^e:

lappend auto_path "/location/of/my/eclipse/lib_tcl"
package require eclipse
#ec_set_option io 0;    # input/output/error via tty (for testing)
ec_set_option io 2;     # input/output/error via queues (default)
ec_init

Apart from the basic functionality in package eclipse which takes care of linking Tcl to ECLⁱPS^e, there is a package eclipse_tools containing Tk interfaces to ECLⁱPS^e facilities like debugging and development support. This package should be used when developing Tcl/Tk/ECLⁱPS^e applications. To add these tools to your application, load the package and add the tools menu to your application’s menu bar. Your code should then contain the following pattern:

package require eclipse
package require eclipse_tools
...
menu .mbar
...
ec_init
...
ec_tools_init .mbar.tools

See also the examples in the lib_tcl directory of the ECLⁱPS^e installation.