Base Directory Specification and plugins

[Gary Kramlich]

On 11/21/2010 01:28 AM, Ryan Lortie wrote:
> Hi Gary,
> 
> On Sat, 2010-11-20 at 20:15 -0600, Gary Kramlich wrote:
>> That leaves the data directory.  However, the data directory on a unix
>> machine ends up being ~/.local/share and putting a native plugin under a
>> share directory seems to be completely wrong to me.
> 
> Your concern here is misplaced.  You can logically claim that it is
> either completely incorrect to place native binaries in the user home
> directory or that it is safe to blindly do so without consideration of
> the "share" vs. "lib" issue.  Which one you choose depends on your
> assumption about the different sorts of computers that the user's home
> directory might end up being used on.

If I didn't want to put native libraries in the user's home directory,
then I wouldn't have run into this dilemma.  You're right though, it is
just a name, but that makes me wonder why there was a separation of
cache, config, and data then...

> Having a separate 'lib' directory doesn't automatically solve the
> problem associated with trying to use a home directory that contains
> binaries on multiple different architectures.  It's just a name.

I completely agree, but a plugin is not data, config, or cache, at least
according to the definitions given in the specification.  If the point
of XDG_DATA_HOME is just for data that typically would go under a share
directory (examples, pixmaps, etc) then why even have the share
directory under .local?

It seems to me that by adding another sub directory to ~/.local for
data, that there was intent to expand on what could go in ~/.local in
which case putting plugins and libraries in a lib sub directory makes
total sense, at least to me.

> Cheers

-- 
Gary Kramlich <grim at reaperworld.com>

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