Re: [xml] more questions on catalogs

[Daniel Veillard <veillard redhat com>]

On Wed, Feb 22, 2006 at 09:36:26AM -0800, Rick Jones wrote:
> Daniel Veillard wrote:
> >  No, this is a system resource. On a Red Hat/Fedora system it will be 
> >  created
> > by the installer as part of the installtion scripts of the packages in the
> > distribution.
>
> So, it is left up to the system to create, but libxml2 expects the system 
> to create it in a particular place yes?

  yes.

> > > It is possible for libxml2 to be built in such a way as to have the 
> > > default catalog location elsewhere?
> >
> >
> >  You can hack it, but then you're on your own. I don't support this, 
> > and /etc/xml should be part of the (Linux) Filesystem Standard, not 
> > specific
> > to libxml2.
>
> I wasn't meaning to imply I wanted to put it anywhere else :)  I wanted to 
> know if I needed to deal with it possibly being somewhere else.
>
> Part of the difficulty stems from the application (netperf) being run on 
> much more than just a Linux system, so I cannot count on a Linux Filesystem 
> Standard. I was hoping there was a bit more of a "libxml2 filesystem 
>  standard"  which i suppose is why I was asking if the install of libxml2 - 
> for example on HP-UX or Windows - should create /etc/xml

  libxml2 doesn't need /etc/xml . It will use it if other packages want 
automatically registered resources for all users.
  If you are not on Linux and have control over the OS, then you may
put it somewhere else and keep a local patch to the released libxml2
but it's more likely to confuse people.

> Again, I'm not looking to diverge, just trying to see how "invariant" 
> /etc/xml happens to be.  When I install netperf, I will want to install its 
> catalog, and to do that I will want to know where the master catalog is 
> supposed to be, and if it is not there (eg /etc/xml/catalog) that it is 
> "OK" for netperf's install to go ahead and create it.

  the master catalog will be  /etc/xml/catalog unless the system software
have been installed differently.

> I'm still a little fuzzy on why if libxml2 is expecting /etc/xml and 
> libxml2 is ported to more than just Linux and so more than just the Linux 
> Filesystem Standard, why it would rely on the OS to create /etc/xml, but if 
> indeed, /etc/xml (where would that be under Windows?) is where libxml2 is 
> going to look, and it would take a libxml2 source change for it to look 
> elswhere rather than a configure option, I suppose I can consider /etc/xml 
> an invariant.

  yes, that's the default from an upstream point of view.
But you should not rely on catalog being present. It's merely an accelerator
or a way to keep instance identical in the case you may not have network
access.
  IMHO if you fully care about portability to any target OS then don't
assume a catalog and build the paths in your software.

> > > not that I plan on using the catalog manipulation routines, but it might 
> > > be nice if their mentions in the catalog.html file were hyperlinks to 
> > > their descriptions.
> >
> >
> >  True, I take patches :-) or you can bugzilla.
>
> Touche :)

  :-)

Daniel

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