[anjuta-devel] Project manager: changing installation directory

[Sébastien Granjoux <seb sfo free fr>]

Hi,


It should be now possible to change the installation directory of a 
target using the GUI now.

1. You need to change the installation directory property of the target 
to almost any name.
This will change the target list variable and create a new group 
variable with this name, eventually prefixed by dir if you haven't put it.
2. You need to set this variable to the directory you really want. This 
variable appears as a group property. If you install your program in a 
standard directory (bin by example) you don't need this step.



It's not really difficult to do but I think it's not so simple 
especially for someone not knowing autotools. I think, it would be 
better if you can change the target installation directory by changing 
only target properties. I think the use of an additional variable is 
rather an implementation detail.


I thinking about these possible ways to make this better:

1. Hide this completely this: The target installation directory property 
will have the content of the corresponding dir variable as value.
+ You can change the installation directory completely in the target 
properties
- The backend needs to take care of creating additional variable when needed
- You don't really control (in the GUI) the name of the dir variable and 
how it is mapped to a target.


2. Accept smart entry: The dir variable name should contains only 
alphanumeric characters and underscores. A installation directory name 
contains probably $ (if it uses a variable) or directory separators. If 
the user enter a simple name (alphanumeric and underscore only), we 
consider it as a dir variable name else we consider it as an 
installation directory name and create the needed dir variable name 
automatically.
+ You can change the installation directory completely in the target 
properties
+ You can control the name of the dir variable if you want.
- If you enter a installation directory name, after clicking on apply 
the value of this variable will be quite different. It will be the dir 
variable name while the value you enter will appear in the group 
properties. Note that this entry has already some magic, because the dir 
prefix is added automatically if needed.


3. Do nothing more:
+ You can control the name of the dir variable if you want.
- You cannot change the installation directory completely in the target 
properties dialog.



I think, the solution 2 is probably better. I already have a similar 
problem with module and package, I think module are not very useful. But 
I think it's better to keep the real structure of the autotools project 
files to make it easier to understand them and possibly change them for 
more advanced needs. Perhaps you can imagine a better way to achieve this.


I still have some ideas to improve this, by example it would be nice to 
use a combo box with standard and already used directories. But I think 
it's not that important.

By the way, the autotools backend should cover the basic needs now, I 
still plan to improve it during this cycle but I don't know exactly what 
is more important. I'm interested to know if someone think that 
something is really missing in this backend. Eventually, I can try to 
list all missing features so we can order them by priority.


Regards,

Sébastien