Re: [O] Location of OpenDocument style files should be configurable

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Tue, 03 Jan 2012, Bastien  wrote:

>>> ps: Makefiles are beyond my jurisdiction. I will let Bastien act
>>> on your patch(es).
>> 
>> Looks like my earlier patch hasn't been applied for 7.8.03. :(

> Yes -- things are not entirely clear to me in this area, and the
> ongoing discussion between you, Achim and Jambunathan feels like
> we need to move carefully.

To summarise as I see the issue:
 - Because arbitrary paths for datadir can be specified at compile
   time, any approach using (only) heuristic searches at run time is
   bound to fail in some configurations.
 - Most other packages using such heuristics provide a way for
   overriding it. The simplest way is just using defvar or defcustom
   (but not a defconst) for the variable definition. (This was my
   original suggestion, which would have been trivial to implement.)
 - However, if the location is known at compile time, there is also no
   need for such searches, because the datadir path can be embedded in
   the lisp code.
 - Preferably, the package should behave the same, regardless if it is
   loaded as elisp sources or as byte-compiled files. Embedding the
   path only in the byte code may be too fragile (in fact, for 7.8.03
   it currently fails with Gentoo's staged installs), and also lead to
   surprising behaviour.
 - Therefore I think the best approach would be either to record such
   paths in org-install.el (as Achim has suggested), or to have the
   Makefile create a new file like org-paths.el for this purpose.

Cheers,
Ulrich