# Extending the System

Assuming that LINK has been installed properly, the procedure for customizing the system to meet individual needs is relatively straightforward. This first release of manual will serve as an introduction to this process, but, unfortunately, is not yet a complete reference guide. This section of the manual will grow from release to release of LINK, and will give references to examples in the code when the current text is inadequate. The process of extending the STk interpreter is a derivative of the process described by Erick Gallesio in the STk documentation. If you plan to add several commands to the system, the document entitled <#7091#>Extending the STk Interpreter<#7091#> and found in the STk distribution is a valuable reference. However, the LINK system does include many helpful routines which help in the extension of the interpreter in a systematic way. In particular, new STk primitives for <#7092#>Collection<#7092#>, <#7093#>List<#7093#>, and <#7094#>Array<#7094#> methods are generated automatically by a process described below. To begin, let us consider a simple example. We assume is that the following environment variables have been set:
<#7102#>
<#7103#>

Environment Variable | Value
LINK_BASE | full pathname of link's root directory
STK_LOAD_PATH | $(LINK_BASE)/stklos
STK_LIBRARY | depends on the location of your STk distribution
LINK_LIBRARY | the location of <#7206#>LINK<#7206#>'s libraries once installed (see the file $LINK_BASE/INSTALL)

<#7103#>
<#7102#>