Re: GNUstep on Windows, "desktop" bundles...

[Alex Perez]

On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, Alex Perez wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, David Ayers wrote:
> 
> > Alex Perez wrote:
> > > Larry Cow wrote:
> > > 
> > >>Alex Perez a écrit :
> > >>
> > >>>IMHO GNUstep should be installed into C:\Program Files\GNUstep. People 
> > >>>do not install it there because of the whole "space issue" but that 
> > >>>space issue is rendered irrelevant because NTFS retains the old 8-char 
> > >>>filenames. With this in mind, installing to C:\Progra~1\GNUstep is 
> > >>>perfectly safe.
> > >>> 
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >>Yeah, it should work, but I can't help considering it a hack. But 
> > >>anyway, the filesystem question is important, since we still don't know 
> > >>how gnustep should see it. Should it see the root as Desktop? as user's 
> > >>directory? as a special dir containing the different drives?
> > > 
> > > 
> > > It's not really a hack...the first directory to ever be created in C:\ 
> > > that starts with "progra" will always be suffixed with ~1. This 
> > > compatibility can be harnessed to our advantage.
> > > 
> > 
> > Note that these "standard directory" names for Windows are localized.
> > Fortunately for German variants "Programme" would also resolve to
> > PROGRA~1, but that seems like luck derived from the common roots of the
> > word, which I doubt we'll have for every language windows supports.
> 
> An excellent point which I did not consider...there may be another more 
> clean way of doing this though...there's an environment variable under 
> 2000 and XP called CommonProgramFiles which is set to C:\Program 
> Files\Common Files...this would obviously have to be localized by windows 
> to whatever c:\program files is set to. I do not think that the envvar is 
> localized, and if that is indeed the case we could parse the path until 
> the second backslash (striping off anything after C:\Program Files\) to 
> get the localized directory. If we then install to the 8-character 
> equivalent (it will always be the first 8 chars of whatever the localized 
> version of the word "Program" is, with ~1 suffixed after the 8 chars)
> 
Sorry for following up to my own e-mail, but I noticed that there's an 
envvar called simply "ProgramFiles" which I'd previously overlooked when I 
sent this prior message. This is exactly what we need. we can just install 
to "C:\%ProgramFiles%\GNUstep"