The Tornado Launcher is a central control panel that ties together the whole suite of Tornado tools and services. The launcher's mission is to bring together tools and targets; but, as the centerpiece of Tornado, the launcher also provides other services.

Through the launcher, you can

• inspect information about available targets and target servers

• launch any Tornado tool attached to any available target server

• start VxWorks target simulators

• select among available target servers

• create and manage target servers

• install new Tornado components

• consult Internet publications relating to Tornado or VxWorks

• transmit support requests to Wind River Systems, and query their status

The Tornado registry (a daemon that keeps track of all target servers) must be in place on a host at your site before anyone can use Tornado. If the launcher finds no registry, it offers to start one on the current host.¹ For more information on the registry and on other host-configuration issues, see 2. Setup and Startup.

To start the Tornado Launcher, invoke its name from the UNIX command line or from any shell script or window-manager menu:²

% launch &

Notice the & in the preceding example. Because the launcher runs in its own separate graphical window, it normally runs asynchronously from its parent shell.

	NOTE: All tools started by the launcher inherit its working directory. You can select other directories when necessary from within each tool, but it is usually convenient to start the launcher from the directory where you expect to do most of your work.

To terminate the launcher, select Quit from the launcher File menu.

The launcher is a convenience, not a straitjacket. If you prefer, you can start Tornado tools and manage target servers directly from a UNIX shell or shell script.

1:  By default the launcher has the registry create its database in $WIND_BASE/.wind. If that directory is not writable, the database is created in $HOME/.wind.

2:  If you have any trouble with this command, make sure that your host development environment is correctly configured, as described in 2.3 The Tornado Host Environment.