Request for clarification on menu/file spec

[cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis)]

On Wednesday 08 February 2006 01:16, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Tuesday 07 February 2006 16:56, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> > Watch out what you ask for, you may get it.
>
> ;)
>
> > With such scheme it means that
> > after installing 6 applications your search path for a number of
> > resources also becomes 6 path's longer.
>
> this is what we have caches for, though, right? so that the extra paths
> only come into play, performance wise, on cache updates.
>
> > It also means that applications (in KDE's
> > case kded) will need to be modified to watch /etc/xdg.conf in order to
> > pick up new applications.
>
> yes. though that's easy enough to do.
>
> > Apart from that there will be a transition period in
> > which only recent applications/distributions will support
> > /etc/xdg.conf.
>
> the sooner we start, though ... ;)
>
> > If there is concensus that that is the right long term direction and
> > that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages then I guess we should go
> > that way. I would like to hear some more cheers of support for that
> > direction first though.
>
> the only concern i have is whether or not it's easy enough for 3rd party
> apps to modify an xdg.conf file. i don't see why it wouldn't be, but i
> can see scenarios happening where 2 apps both add the same path causing
> useless clutter.
>
> i wonder if we shouldn't provide some simple command line tools to
> add/remove paths. this way in the future if we change course again ISVs
> won't have to change what they do (just call "addxdgdatadir
> /the/new/path" or
> what-have-you), we'll just update the tools. this would have the added
> bonus of Getting It Right(tm) without app developers having to do much
> work.
>
> thoughts?

On Debian we have desktop-profiles [1] which runs an Xsession.d script that 
manages the contents of the XDG_*_DIRS variables (and similar variables 
such as KDEDIRS, or CHOICESPATH).

When setting the variables it parses config files that specify the available 
config/data sets and the conditions under which they should be activated. 
If conditions are met the profile directory is activated with the specified 
priority (relative to other active profiles).

[1] http://packages.qa.debian.org/d/desktop-profiles.html has a link to
    a tarball of it
[2] http://developer.skolelinux.no/~cobaco/desktop-profiles has a html-ized
    version of the man-page
-- 
cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis):
    Coördinator Belgisch Skolelinux team
    Coördinator Nederlandse Skolelinux vertaling
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