Re: [GNUstep-packagers] patch for observance of $HOME

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 6 Aug 2004, at 08:54, Rogelio Serrano wrote:

> On 2004-08-06 15:36:51 +0800 Matt Rice <ratmice@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > personally I don't think we should trust environment
> > variables for reasons in the archive..
> > http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnustep/2003-11/msg00015.html
> > and would rather if we did something like cleanse
> > make/GNUstep.sh of writes to the user root, so that it
> > isn't breaking the sandbox if possible, so he doesn't
> > have to redirect $HOME to a directory inside the
> > sandbox (if i grok)
> > maybe by setting an environment variable before
> > sourcing GNUstep.sh to disable running make_services
> > and stuff
>
> I still believe that its better to set these during compilation. And 
> that we all have a consensus on how to set up these paths for each and 
> every platform GNUstep is going to run. And we use the path utilities 
> to hide  these details from the app. In short no more hard coding of 
> paths.

I'm not sure I follow this ...

My understanding is that we already have no hard coding of paths except 
for a few backup cases for if the environment variables are not set up. 
 Are you simply saying that these last-resort backups should be 
removed, so that apps will just bomb out if they are not given basic 
path information at runtime (when they start) ?  If so, I'm not averse 
to that idea as long as we can make sure that, when a program can't run 
for lack of path info, it can give clear and simple instructions on how 
to provide it with the information it needs.

As far as the environment v file issue goes ...

Environment variables are fast, but I've seen complaints in the past 
about GNUstep cluttering the environment with too many variables.  The 
issue abut environment variables getting removed when su and similar 
utilities are run is also a problem.

The .GNUsteprc config file is slower, but we can avoid most of the 
environment clutter ... however, we still need something like an 
environment variable to specify the system root so we can find the 
config file.  We also need to modify PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH etc to 
allow GNUstep programs to be simply run from the unix shell.

The GNUstep.sh script to set the environment is a kind of compromise.

I kind of favour the idea of having a script to set three essential 
environment variables -
PATH
LD_LIBRARY_PATH  (or system specific equivalent)
GNUSTEP_ROOT
and doing everything else via .GNUsteprc config files (with a path 
utilities tool to provide path information
that any other external software needs).  The make system could easily 
set up the internal variables it needs from this.

I don't like the idea of using the HOME environment variable ... as it 
is not reliably present/correct.

The $GNUSTEP_ROOT/.GNUsteprc file already allows the home directory of 
a user to be controlled,
and I would have thought that this was sufficient to solve Armando's 
problems with Gentoo.
eg. where he would like to set HOME=/xxx/yyy he could set 
GNUSTEP_ROOT=/xxx/yyy and create a .GNUsteprc file in that directory 
containing 'GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT=/xxx/yyy' to run everything within that 
directory.