Re: Can't generate base doc for official debian package

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 5 Apr 2004, at 23:21, Eric Heintzmann wrote:

> We (the Debian GNUstep Maintainers) cannot build the documention 
> provided by gnustep-base 1.9.1.
> This is why there is not yet -base 1.9.1 in the debian official tree.
>
> The problem seems simple:
> When building debian packages, we use the fakeroot tool which simulate 
> a root environment.
> autogsdoc think it is launched by root, it tries to write and read 
> something in /root/GNUstep and then fails to create the doc. (fakeroot 
> does not give write permission in /root ).
>
> See the following error messages :
>
> '/root/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults'  read-only
> 2004-04-06 00:00:48.646 autogsdoc[4145] File NSData.m: 153. In 
> readContentsOfFile Open (/root/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults) 
> attempt failed - Permission denied
> 2004-04-06 00:00:48.646 autogsdoc[4145] Unable to load defaults from 
> '/root/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults'
> 2004-04-06 00:00:48.647 autogsdoc[4145] File NSUserDefaults.m: 770. In 
> [NSUserDefaults -initWithContentsOfFile:] Path 
> '/root/GNUstep/Defaults' is not writable - making user defaults for 
> '/root/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults'  read-only
> 2004-04-06 00:00:48.647 autogsdoc[4145] File NSData.m: 153. In 
> readContentsOfFile Open (/root/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults) 
> attempt failed - Permission denied
> 2004-04-06 00:00:48.647 autogsdoc[4145] Unable to load defaults from 
> '/root/GNUstep/Defaults/.GNUstepDefaults'
> 2004-04-06 00:00:48.647 autogsdoc[4145] WARNING - unable to create 
> shared user defaults!

<snip>

> I've tried to set GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT by hand, but that doesn't work.
>
> Any ideas to overrides the problem.

The GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT environment variable is set up as a convenience 
for external (non-gnustep) programs rather than being something used by 
gnustep programs, which is why setting it won't have any effect.

The way to override the location of the defaults directory is to create 
a .GNUsteprc in the GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT directory containing a line of 
the form 'GNUSTEP_DEFAULTS_ROOT=path-you-want-to-use'
This is documented ... in the documentation you can't build :-(

FYI there is a proposal to change this mechanism and move the config 
file to /etc, so this my have changed by the next release.
On the other hand, I've already committed a change to CVS so that many 
application (and autogsdoc in particular) should be able to carry on 
running correctly even if the defaults database is not readable or 
writable.