1.6. Enabling a Software Collection

⁠1.6. Enabling a Software Collection

The scl tool is used to enable a Software Collection and to run applications in the Software Collection environment.

General usage of the scl tool can be described using the following syntax:

 scl action software_collection_1 software_collection_2 command

When executing the command, the scl tool creates a child process (subshell) of the current shell. Running the command again then creates a subshell of the subshell.

See Section 1.7, “Listing Enabled Software Collections” for information on how to list enabled Software Collections for the current subshell.

Note that you have to disable an enabled Software Collection first to be able to enable it again. To disable the Software Collection, exit the subshell created when enabling the Software Collections.

When using the scl tool to enable a Software Collection, you can only perform one action with the enabled Software Collection at a time. The enabled Software Collection must be disabled first before performing another action.

⁠1.6.1. Running an Application Directly

For example, to directly run Perl with the --version option in the Software Collection named software_collection_1, execute the following command:

 scl enable software_collection_1 'perl --version'

Alternatively, you can create a wrapper script that shortens the commands for running applications in the Software Collection environment. For more information on wrappers, see Section 3.3, “Packaging Wrappers for Software Collections”.