Runtime environment

When you install MAT (or configure it in a CVS checkout), the configuration tool creates a MAT settings file in several locations (for historical reasons). The definitive version resides in MAT_PKG_HOME/lib/mat/python/MAT/MAT_settings.config. This settings file is a Python config file, which is very much like a Windows INI file. The template that MAT uses resides in MAT_PKG_HOME/etc/MAT_settings.config.in. The variables defined there are:

PYTHONBIN	The path to the Python executable which MAT uses, 2.6.x or 2.7.x.
TABBED_TERMINAL_BIN	The executable used by the --spawn_tabbed_terminal option in MATWeb
JAVA_BIN	The path to a Java executable, 1.6_04 or later.
JCARAFE_JAR	The JAR file which contains the Carafe engine
YUI_JS_LIB	Pathname of the Yahoo! UI Toolkit library used by the MAT UI
CHERRYPY_PYTHONLIB	Location of the CherryPy Web application framework
MUNKRES_PYTHONLIB	Pathname to the Python implementation of the Kuhn-Munkres alignment algorithm, version 1.0.5.4 or later.
HTTP_PORT	The default port of MATWeb. Default value is 7801.
JCARAFE_SERVER_PORT	The lowest port on which to start the Carafe tagger server.
SUBPROCESS_DEBUG	Set this setting to "yes" if you want to see the actual command line invocations of the subprocesses that MAT invokes.
SUBPROCESS_STATISTICS	Set this setting to "yes" if you want to see the memory usage and time for every synchronous subprocess call. Only available on Linux, and only if the psutil package is provided.
PSUTIL_PYTHONLIB	See SUBPROCESS_STATISTICS above.

By default, the values for these variables are read out of the definitive MAT_settings.config at runtime. However, there are two ways you can override these values:

You can provide a config file as the value of the MAT_SETTINGS_FILE environment variable, which contains values you want to override the default values.
You can specify any of these variables as environment variables.

You shouldn't need either of these options, but they're available for emergencies and special cases.

If you're getting weird behavior, and you want to see where your config variables are coming from, the --config_verbose common option available with most command-line tools will help you.