Re: PATCH: NSPathUtilities etc

[Roland Schwingel]

Hi Sheldon...

bug-gnustep-bounces+roland.schwingel=onevision.de@gnu.org wrote on
19.01.2004 09:56:30:
> GNUstep, paths and the GFHS
> ===========================
>
> GNUstep is being used across many different platforms, some more
different
> than others. Although the GFHS defines a standard, there are reasons for
> bending the rules for many platforms. I think that the big contribution
of
> the GFHS is to define the things to find in certain places, like what
should
> go in Library. Changes in the root point for some of these heirarchies
> shouldn't make any difference.
<snip>
> For ms-windows systems, GNUstep will source HKLM\Software\GNU\GNUstep for

> string keys. Coming one day soon. (see Win32 below)
<snip>
> Win32
> -----
> The work is still progressing and much testing to be done. There's
> enough here
> to see the approach being taken. I didn't want to hold up the changes.
The
> code currently works as it's always done so current Win32 remains the
same.
> It will change soon, though. Currently developing a set of Win32
Additions
> which will only contain routines required by gnustep-base for inclusion.
> Probably will then have another Win32 Additions set for gnustep-gui
> which will
> contain routines required by that library but useful at the application
> level.

I have read your posting with great interest, and have a little bit bad
feelings in my stomach because of the registry stuff you propose above
for win32. It is a good thing to unify stuff over platforms and make it
usable all the same (it is that what I understand why you are doing this).

But what are my concerns... Well imagine you are using more than one
version of gnustep at the same time, so all versions are querying the
registry, so all the keys there must be version and location independant,
as of the fact the different versions are having different locations
on the harddrive. I find it a real benefit for GNUstep to *NOT* use
registry right now. Registry will sooner or later cause problems, that's
what my experience tells me (it is some sort of dancing with the devil to
me).

We are encapsulating GNUstep (as DLL together with its resources) in the
.app
folder of our applications on windows at present. So an application is
completely self containing, just doubleclick it and it starts. You can copy
the application to whatever location and you don't need to do any kind
of setup. If you make changes that use the registry you need to do a setup!
And much more pain will be if you use different applications at the same
time, settings will not be unique to each app (eg. GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT
is different for each application). This is all really bad! And that
is only one problem that will arise when doing this.

Isn't there another solution beside the dreadful registry? What do you
think
of a file stored at the same location as the .dll containing all these
settings?
(so you can use the same mechanism for Windows and *NIX platforms. Unix
loads it
from /etc/... (or whatever location) and Win32 loads it from the dll
location?
(this is just a very first and basic idea for avoiding registry)

Greetings,

Roland