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

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Fri, 2011-04-15 at 14:19 -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> 
> > The same thing happens for the other types of files i mentioned above.
> > dbus looks only for service files in /usr/share/dbus-1/services, gtk
> > looks for themes in /usr/lib64/gtk-3.0/3.0.0/theming-engines, etc, etc.
> > So, anything that has a file of this type is "hard" to relocate.
> 
> no, GTK can use GTK_PATH for this.
> 
> > Also, apps that consume such files are also hard to relocate. Take
> > nautilus for instance, it looks for extensions
> > in /usr/lib64/nautilus/extensions-3.0/, but if you relocate it, how does
> > extensions know where to install extensions?
> 
> something like:
> 
>     nautilus --extension-directory
> 
> would work just fine, no?
> 
> although the example is not really that similar, this is how we allow
> JACK clients to find out where the server can be contacted, via jackd
> --tmpdir
> 
> doesn't seem so hard, does it?

I'm not saying its impossible to set the environment paths or whatnot to
pick up things like this. Its certainly not (although you need to be
something of an expert to know what to tweak). However, its hard,
because the setting you need to change affects not your app but the
environment. Like, if you install an app with a desktop file in a
nonstandard prefix, then you need to tell the gnome panel (etc) of this
new location, which is much harder than starting your own app with some
environment variable set, as this is a global process.

In a specialized setup where you are in control of everything is
certainly possible. But in an osx scheme where the user just drops an
executable file somewhere it doesn't just work. You'd need something
like the the osx launch services to handle it.

-- 
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 Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
       alexl redhat com            alexander larsson gmail com 
He's a leather-clad native American messiah plagued by the memory of his 
family's brutal murder. She's a beautiful mutant former first lady with 
someone else's memories. They fight crime!