The prepare functionality is the interface the centos-art.sh script provides to standardize the final configuration stuff your workstation needs, once the working copy of &TCAR; has been downloaded inside it already. Assuming this is the very first time you run the centos-art.sh script, you'll find that it isn't found in your workstation. This is correct because you haven't created the symbolic link that make it available in the execution path, yet. In order to make the centos-art.sh script available in the execution path of your workstation, you need to run it using its absolute path first: ~/Projects/artwork/trunk/Scripts/Bash/centos-art.sh prepare [OPTIONS] Later, once the centos-art.sh script is available in the execution path of your system, there is no need for you to use the absolute path again. From this time on, you can use the centos-art command-line interface directly, as the following example describes: centos-art prepare [OPTIONS] The prepare functionality accepts the following options: --quiet Supress all output messages except error messages. When this option is passed, all confirmation requests are supressed and a possitive answer is assumed for them, just as if the --answer-yes option whould have been provided. --answer-yes Assume yes to all confirmation requests. --packages This option verifies packeges required by centos-art.sh script. installs or updates required packages. When required packages aren't installed, this option uses sudo yum install command to perform the installation task. When required packages are installed, this option uses sudo yum update to update them, if there is any related actualization to be applied on. In both cases, it is required that you configure the /etc/sudoers configuration file first, as discribed in . --links This option maintains the file relation between your working copy and configuration files inside your workstation through symbolic links. When you provide this option, the centos-art.sh puts itself into your system's execution path through its command line interface centos-art and makes common brushes, patterns, palettes and fonts inside the working copy, available to applications like GIMP in order for you to make use of them without loosing version control over them. This option removes all common fonts, brushes, patterns, and palettes currently installed in your home directory, in order to create a fresh installation of them all again, using the working copy as reference. --images This option initializes image files inside the working copy. When you provide this option, the centos-art.sh scripts renders image files from all design models available in the working copy. This step is required in order to satisfy file dependencies among different components inside the working copy. --manuals This option initializes documentation files inside the working copy. When you provide this option, the centos-art.sh script renders all documentation manuals from their related source files to different output formats, so you can read them nicely. --environment Print the name and value of some of the environment variables used by centos-art.sh scripts as described in . When no option is provided to prepare functionality, the centos-art.sh script uses the --packages, --links, --images and --manuals options as default behaviour. Otherwise, if you provide any option, the centos-art.sh script avoids its default behaviour and executes the prepare functionality as specified by the options you provides. Notice that it is possible for you to execute the prepare functionality as much times as you need to. This is specially useful when you need to keep syncronized the relation between content produced inside your working copy and the applications you use outside it. For example, considering you've added new brushes to or removed old brushes from your working copy of &TCAR;, the link information related to those files need to be updated in the ~/.gimp-2.2/brushes directory too, in a way the addition/deletion change that took place in your working copy can be reflected there, as well. The same is true for other similar components like fonts, patterns and palettes. There are some environment variables that you can customize to fit your personal needs (e.g., default text editor, default locale information, default time zone representation, etc.). To customize these variables you need to edit your personal profile (i.e., ~/.bash_profile) and set the redefinition there. Notice that you may need to logout and then do login again in order for the new variable values to take effect. The default text editor information is controlled by the EDITOR environment variable. The centos-art.sh script uses the default text editor to edit subversion pre-commit messages, translation files, documentation files, script files, and similar text-based files. If EDITOR environment variable is not set, centos-art.sh script uses /usr/bin/vim as default text editor. Otherwise, the following values are recognized by centos-art.sh script: /usr/bin/vim /usr/bin/emacs /usr/bin/nano If no one of these values is set in the EDITOR environment variable, the centos-art.sh script uses /usr/bin/vim text editor, the one installed by default in &TCD;. The default locale information is controlled by the LANG environment variable. This variable is initially set in the installation process of &TCD;, specifically in the Language step. Generally, there is no need to customize this variable in your personal profile. If you need to change the value of this environment variable do it through the login screen of GNOME Desktop Environment or the system-config-language command. The centos-art.sh script uses the LANG environment variable to determine what language to use for printing output messages from the script itself, as well as the portable objects locations that need to be updated or edited when you localize directory structures inside the working copy of &TCAR;. The time zone representation is a time correction applied to the system time (stored in the BIOS clock) based on your country location. This correction is specially useful to distributed computers around the world that work together and need to be syncronized in time to know when things happened. &TCAR; is made of one server and several workstations spread around the world. In order for all these workstations to know when changes in the server took place, it is required that they all set their system clocks to use the same time information (e.g., through UTC (Coordinated Universal Time)) and set the time correction for their specific countries in the operating system. Otherwise, it would be difficult to know when something exactly happened. Generally, setting the time information is a straight-forward task and configuration tools provided by &TCD; do cover time correction for most of the countries around the world. However, if you need a time precision not provided by any of the date and time configuration tools provided by &TCD; then, you need to customize the TZ environment variable in your personal profile to correct the time information by yourself. The format of TZ environment variable is described in tzset(3) manual page.