[Patch] Update 'How to' to clarify computation of datadir

[Jeremy White]

I suspect you did not read far enough down the thread:

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2006-February/007719.html

Cheers,

Jeremy

Rodney Dawes wrote:
> Ah. I guess I missed the original thread. It looks like you're trying to
> solve a special case problem, by putting your solution to that issue, in
> as a general case specification. In the general case, I don't think your
> solution works well.
> 
> It seems like we just need to clearly define datadir, sysconfdir, etc...
> somewhere. You argued that we can't control what path arguments are
> passed to configure by vendors of Linux, but we can, and do. The Linux
> Filesystem Hierarchy Standard does exactly that.
> 
> I think you just want to specify the installation to user's $HOME case.
> The system-wide installation issues are pretty much taken care of by the
> FHS and use of the $XDG_{CONFIG,DATA}_DIRS variables. So, I'd say we
> should just specify the use of $XDG_{CONFIG,DATA}_HOME when installing
> items to the user's $HOME.
> 
> -- dobey
> 
> 
> On Sat, 2006-03-11 at 07:52 -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
> 
>>Sorry, I should have included the context in my email.
>>
>>There is an entire thread detailing this more carefully here:
>>  http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2006-February/007685.html
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Jeremy
>>
>>Rodney Dawes wrote:
>>
>>>Perhaps I am just confused, but what is this meant to solve exactly?
>>>$XDG_{CONFIG,DATA}_{DIRS,HOME} I do not believe are meant to be used
>>>as build/install-time configuration mechanisms. They are meant to be
>>>used for runtime detection of all possible datadir and sysconfdir
>>>paths which would have been used at build/install time.
>>>
>>>Also, the probabilities that a system-wide install is being done by
>>>root, that the first item in $XDG_DATA_DIRS is /usr/share, the first
>>>item in $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is /etc, and that root can write to these,
>>>are all very high. Also, what happens if an application is built as
>>>a user, and then installed as root for system-wide use? Does the
>>>path to which the data/config files change between "make" and
>>>"sudo make install"? That seems fairly inappropriate to me.
>>>
>>>-- dobey
>>>
>>>
>>>On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 23:45 -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>The attached patch specifies that a system wide
>>>>installation should compute datadir by using the
>>>>first writable element of $XDG_DATA_DIRS
>>>>(or sysconfdir from the first writeable element
>>>>of $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS), as previously discussed.
>>>>
>>>>The spec is clearly lacking, so I request that this
>>>>either be applied, or a clear alternate be suggested.
>>>>
>>>>Cheers,
>>>>
>>>>Jeremy
> 
> 
>