basedir-spec issue

[Laszlo Peter]

On Fri, 2004-05-07 at 21:45, Thomas Leonard wrote:
> On Fri, May 07, 2004 at 09:35:42PM +1200, Laszlo Peter wrote:
> >
> > background: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141901
> > 
> > problem: if GNOME (or KDE or whatever) is built with a $prefix
> > different from /usr or /usr/local, data files in $datadir won't be
> > found unless you set XDG_DATA_DIRS, which is kinda broken.
> 
> No, that's the intended behaviour. If you install shared files to a
> non-standard location then you MUST set XDG_DATA_DIRS so that other
> programs can find them.

I see the point in standardising the shared data dirs, but if I
build an entire desktop stack in a non-standard prefix, I expect
it to Just Work [tm]. I realise I will need to set XDG_DATA_DIRS
if I want to share the data with other desktops/3rd party programs.

> You don't want your filemanager finding the MIME database, and your email
> client not being able to find it (or finding a different version), do you?
> Think of all the confusion that would cause.

Actually, that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Let's say I
have 2 different versions of GNOME installed in /opt:
/opt/gnome-2.x and /opt/gnome-2.y. There's no correct setting
of XDG_DATA_DIRS that would make each build find it's own version
of the data files. Whereas if $datadir was first in the search
path, it would just work.

Laca