The configure script

VMD is designed to be relatively easy to compile for different operating system versions (i.e., IRIX or HP-UX), and to allow a person to individually include or exclude different optional capabilities such as support for using the Tcl script interpreter library or support for remote simulation control and display. To make this possible, a configure shell script has been written which will create a Makefile properly configured for the selected architecture and options.

The configure Bourne shell script is found at the top level of the VMD working directory. This script has three purposes:

1. To adapt the Makefile to use the proper libraries and compiler options for the type of operating system being used.
2. To specify which ones of the many optional components of VMD should be included in the final executable, and to include in the Makefile the necessary files for the selected options.
3. To configure the VMD directories and source files to use the values for configurable parameters chosen by the user, i.e., the name of the final executable, the location for where the program is to be installed, etc.

The following steps must be followed to use the configure script to set up the VMD directories in order to compile VMD:

1. The file configure.parameters must be edited to set the values for certain configuration parameters which describe such things as where to install VMD, what names to use for data files, etc. This is described in section 12.
2. After the parameters have been entered, the configure script must be run to create the Makefile necessary to compile VMD. This is described in section 13.
3. Once the Makefile has been created, the command make depend; make must be run after changing to the src subdirectory of the VMD working directory. This will regenerate the source code file dependencies, and then compile the program.
4. After successful compilation, while still in the src directory, the command make install will install the program and necessary data files. This will copy the necessary executables, scripts, and data files to the proper directories as specified by the values of the configuration parameters.