Problem with locally installed apps and libraries

["Rene' Seindal" <rene seindal dk>]

I have run into a small deficiency either of gnome or of my
understanding of it.

I have gnome installed with prefix=/usr as it comes with slackware 7. 
Now I don't want to install my own stuff under the system directories, I
want it in /usr/local which I can easily rdist.  Generally I keep system
installed software and locally installed software apart.  I consider it
sane practice to not mess things up.

When I install an application like gnomepad+ or a library like
gdk_pixbuf, it is not seen by gnome.

The library gdk_pixbuf has a gdk_pixbufConf.sh installed in
/usr/local/lib, but gnome only looks in /usr/lib.  Consequently
gnome-config doesn't understand gdk_pixbuf is installed.  I have spent
some time looking around, and I discovered that setting
GNOME_PATH=/usr/local will make gnome-config look in /usr/local too. 
There is also a GNOME_LIBCONFIG_PATH, but what is it for exactly?

What other effects will these environment variables have?  Are other
programs looking at them?

BTW, shouldn't such *Conf.sh files be put in, say, /usr/lib/conf/
instead of being scattered among the zillions of files in /usr/lib?  It
would be a bit tidier.

As for applications, the locally installed .desktop files aren't found
by the panel menus, as they are installed under
/usr/local/share/gnome/apps, not under /usr/lib/share/gnome/apps. 
Shouldn't the panel have a path of menu directories to merge, rather
than just a single.  I don't want my menus to reflect how I have
installed a program.  It is irrelevant for the user.  Also, it does not
belong on the user-menu, as the applications are system-wide.

Maybe the GNOME_PATH idea should be extended to other programs? 
Certainly it should be documented somewhere.

-- 
René Seindal (rene@seindal.dk)			http://www.seindal.dk/rene/