Configuring Interfaces [polymake wiki]

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===== Configuring Interfaces =====

polymake comes with a lot of interfaces to [[user_guide:external_software|third-party software]].  Each interface must be configured before the first use; in the most cases this involves investigations where the required programs and/or configuration files are installed on your machine. The automatic configuration is performed silently, and it only tries to find the programs at some standard locations (e.g. by examining your PATH setting).  If this heuristic search fails, the interface is disabled until you intentionally take care of it.  For this purpose, polymake got three new interactive commands dealing with configuration:

  ? ''show_unconfigured;''
  :: display the list of currently disabled interfaces; more precisely, for each interface it prints the name of the rulefile where the interface is defined, together with an optional credit note.  The latter usually contains a brief description of the third-party software and includes a URL to the website where you can download it.  After you have installed the software, you should call ''reconfigure'' with the appropriate rulefile name, to enable the interface.
  ? ''%%reconfigure("rulefile");%%''
  :: re-run the auto-configuration routines defined in the rulefile.  This time polymake will ask you questions if the search heuristics fail to find the required programs or a version discrepancy is detected.  Should you change your mind at the last moment, you can response with an empty input, which will effectively disable the interface again.
  .. You can also run this command for an already enabled interface, for example, when some paths to programs have been changed.
  ? ''%%unconfigure("rulefile");%%''
  :: forget the configured settings and disable the interface.  The effect of this command is partially deferred until you quit the interactive session, because the functions loaded from the disabled rulefile can't be deleted in a running process.  You might find this command useful if you, for example, decide to stop using some third-party software and to deinstall it from your computer.  On the other hand, the interface can always be re-configured later on demand.

The old bulk configuration mode is still available: starting ''%%polymake --reconfigure%%'' is equivalent to applying the ''reconfigure'' commands to each rulefile containing any auto-configuration routines, but without asking questions in the failed cases.