basedir spec

[Waldo Bastian]

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On Wednesday 03 September 2003 22:18, Jaap Karssenberg wrote:
> Quoting the basedir spec:
> " If $XDG_DATA_DIRS is either not set or empty, a value equal to
> /usr/local/share/:/usr/share/ should be used. "
>
> The phrasing "not set or empty" is used for all the defaults. I think
> this should be just "not set". Because I want to be able to turn off the
> defaults (for example for testing purposes); to set the var to an empty
> string seems the logical way to do this.

See https://www.redhat.com/archives/xdg-list/2003-May/msg00085.html

For testing you can set it to some /none-existing-path:

"When attempting to read a file, if for any reason a file in a certain 
directory is unaccessible, e.g. because the directory is non-existant, the 
file is non-existant or the user is not authorized to open the file, then the 
processing of the file in that directory should be skipped."

Unsetting variables may be difficult in some situations. No idea if it can be 
cured by additional autoconf stuff but:

"Various  Unix  variants  (DGUX,  HPUX,  QNX,  ...).   POSIX.9  (bindings  for  
FORTRAN77). POSIX.1-1996 did not accept clearenv() and putenv(), but changed 
its  mind  and  scheduled these  functions  for some later issue of this 
standard (cf. B.4.6.1). However, SUSv3 only adds putenv(), and rejected 
clearenv()."

The other option is unsetenv() but that isn't supported eveywhere either so 
the easiest solution that is portable is to use putenv("VAR=") to reset some 
env.var.

> btw. who is the maintainer of the basedir spec ?

I am.

Cheers,
Waldo
- -- 
bastian at kde.org -=|[ SuSE, The Linux Desktop Experts ]|=- bastian at suse.com
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