ApplicationVersioningSystem

Current release: v1.15 ( 2020-12-26 ) [download]

Note about the domain name apvsys.org

• I'm sorry to announce that apvsys.org is not available anymore because is was stolen during may 2008. So, from now, refer to apvsys.sourceforge.net for any apvsys evolution.

What is ApVSys ?

• ApVSys is a general open-source wrapper designed for engineering Unix/Linux environments. It provides a way to use and to manage simultaneously different versions of applications ( engineering tools, compilers, debuggers simulators, ... ).
  
  
• The best way to understand what it is is probably to read the examples of session
  
  
• ApVSys is essentially interesting for a professional environment but is also useful for every Unix/Linux user.

What are the major advantages of ApVSys ?

• Only one path is needed to access to all the versions of all the tools. ( end of the stupid message "path ridiculously too long" !).
  
  
• A default version of all tools is accessible by all users without any setting.
  
  
• The application setting ( license file, environment variables, ... ) needed to start a tool properly are centralized by the ApVSys administrator and there is NO setting needed for the users. Hence, all the users are sharing exactly the same environment and it reduces drastically the support requierements.
  
  
• By editing one ascii file, the user can select a specific version of an application.

What is ApVSys not ?

ApVSys is not a source-code version control system like Clearcase, Mercurial, Git or CVS.

History ?

The original system was written by Alex Farell and it was implemented with success in a big company. It was fully written in perl. It was used, in the beginning, only for gnu tools.

Because I found the system really nice, I've taken it to integrate most of the engineering tools of the company ( in a EDA environment ). I've done some improvements to the system needed to make the system safer ( EDA tools are not gnu tools and do not always respect some basic conventions ;-) ). I've written a lot of add-ons during my free time.

To avoid all kind of legal problem, the "kernel" you will find here was fully rewritten in C. Only the database stucture was kept compatible with the installed database in this company.

License ?

This tool is free and open-source under the GNU General Public License version2.

You can visit the GNU site to learn more about the free open source software philosophy and the GPL licensing.

2020-12-26 : Version 1.15: Change behaviour when a command exists in a previous version but not in the selected one. A warning is displayed to advise the user about the risk.

For details about previous revisions, please read the CHANGELOG file

Planned in future releases:

• the apv-wizard ( graphical user interface to register a tool)
• the apv-pkg ( apvsys package system )

You can send your feedback to the apvsys mailbox.

ApVSys is now supported by Abalgo

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