Re: [Chicken-users] Installing data files for eggs

[Felix]

From: Jim Ursetto <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: [Chicken-users] Installing data files for eggs
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:37:51 -0500

> On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 13:55, Peter Bex <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Is there a proper way to install data files from egg .setup-files?
>> I couldn't find anything at http://wiki.call-cc.org/manual/Extensions
>> so I rolled my own for the "slatex" egg:
>> [...]
>> The disadvantages are obvious: these files don't get uninstalled by
>> chicken-uninstall and Chicken's data files aren't necessarily installed
>> under $PREFIX/share/chicken  (the user can override $DATADIR on the Make
>> invocation when building Chicken).
> 
>> So, I think it would be a good idea to add something like this to
>> setup-api:
> 
>> (define style-path (data-path-for-extension 'slatex))
>> (install-data 'slatex
>>              '("slatex.sty" "slatex-chicken.sty" "cltl.sty")
>>              `((version ,slatex-version))) ;; If this makes sense?
> 
>> The data-path-for-extension would return a unique directory for
>> this extension in which it is free to dump its files.  I think this would
>> make it easier to keep track of where everything is, especially if some
>> extensions install a lot of files.
> 
> I am all for this because I am about to do something similar for
> chickadee.  However a couple notes:
> * you didn't use style-path in your example, was that intentional?
> * I'd prefer it if install-data were able to install files into
> arbitrary directories under the data path (because you might want to
> create a tree, e.g. for a webserver root).  It might be ok to require
> this tree to be mirrored from the source (e.g. "dir/slatex.sty" is
> always installed in $DATADIR/slatex/dir/slatex.sty, not in an
> arbitrary directory), because otherwise the syntax has to change.

IIRC, debian only allows post-installation changes to VARDIR. Does this
apply to DATADIR as well? Where do you (Peter, Jim) see this data files
to be copied to on egg-installation?


cheers,
felix