basedir spec and plugins

[Stefan.Kost at nokia.com]

hi, 

<snip>
>There's certainly value to supporting other combinations, but 
>I'm not so sure about the cost of doing so.  I'm less 
>concerned about the naming of the arch-specific dir (sure, 
>throw all sorts of info in there if it's necessary; it's just 
>a mostly-user-invisible identifier anyway), but worried about 
>how apps on a single system that supports multiple arches 
>would deal with looking things up when XDG_LIB_HOME is set.  
>But maybe we can just punt in that case?  Something like:
>
>"XDG_LIB_HOME will default to $HOME/.local/lib/$ARCH_OS_ABI_STRING/. 
>Implementations which wish to use this default will need to 
>detect the machine architecture, operating system, and C++ ABI 
>[etc.] at compile-time.  If XDG_LIB_HOME is set to a 
>particular value, the application shall use that value without 
>regard to the arch-specific directory.  Users who do not wish 
>to rely on the default should take care to set this variable 
>appropriately if they run applications on the same machine 
>that are compiled for different architecture/OS/C++-ABI combinations."
>
>Or, we could go a different route and not define XDG_LIB_HOME 
>at all, in favor of something like this:
>
>"XDG_LIBROOT_HOME [or some other name that distinguishes it] 
>will default to $HOME/.local/lib/.  Implementations must 
>append $ARCH_OS_ABI_STRING to that value, which can usually be 
>discovered at compile-time."
>
>This actually sounds like a decent route to take to me.  The 
>application (or library) that actually knows what 
>arch/OS/ABI/toaster it was compiled for, can decide the 
>arch-specific string, and the spec only needs to define the 
>format of the string and provide examples.  A user/sysadmin 
>that wishes to set this won't have to worry about arch-clash issues.
>

I like
"XDG_LIB_HOME will default to $HOME/.local/lib/$ARCH_OS_ABI_STRING/
more as this allows the distro/admin to set it up and developers can just put a binary there.

If we go for XDG_LIBROOT_HOME, we'll have to define $ARCH_OS_ABI_STRING.

Stefan

>	-brian
>_______________________________________________
>xdg mailing list
>xdg at lists.freedesktop.org
>http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
>