Re: Resource framework, relocatability (was Re: Glib: a Win32 discussion)

[David Zeuthen <zeuthen gmail com>]

Hi,

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 12:23 AM, Kean Johnston <kean johnston gmail com> wrote:
>> For simplicity, suppose that your all-in-one-files have the extension
>> .glick. Suppose also that we have a per-user-per-system daemon
>> watching (relevant parts of, such as only ~/Downloads, ~/Desktop and
>> ~/Applications) $HOME for such files. That daemon could then make
>> resources in each .glick file, such as .desktop files and other
>> things, available in the ~/.watcher-daemon hierarchy (by looking into
>> each fie). In fact ~/.watcher-daemon could be a FUSE mount the same
>> way ~/.gvfs is a FUSE mount. Then you just have to include
>> ~/.watcher-daemon in the XDG environment variables and you are
>> basically done [1].<crazy_idea/>
>
> Now suppose you are not running on UNIX,

Honestly, I'm not that interested in solving the "make relocatable app
providing plug-ins work without installing the app" use-case work
outside Linux.

FWIW, even on Linux, I'm not even sure it's something worth worry
about - for the few cases where you need this (such as when installing
a MP3 or H264 decoder (e.g. a GStreamer plug-in)), it's fine just
using the platform mechanism (e.g. RPM or DEB). Notably, on both OS X
and Windows, that's what you end up doing - for example, on OS X you
install a .mpkg file in a system-wide location. And, heck, on Linux we
even solved that specific case very nicely using e.g. PackageKit. So
it's not really something worth worrying about.

    David