Re: Symlinks from Tools to Applications

[Gregory John Casamento]

Nicola,

This sounds like I good idea.   I would very much not like to loose the 
application wrappers, so if we can provide a way to do it both ways that would 
be awesome.

Later, GJC
--
Gregory Casamento

----- Original Message ----
From: Nicola Pero <nicola.pero@meta-innovation.com>
To: discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 8:23:16 PM
Subject: Symlinks from Tools to Applications

This might sound heretical, but I'd like to make our FHS integration more tight 
by
symlinking app binaries from the Tools directory. :-)

In other words, when you install GNUMail.app I'd like to create the symlink

GNUSTEP_LOCAL_TOOLS/GNUMail --> GNUSTEP_LOCAL_APPS/GNUMail.app/{...}/GNUMail

(in the non-flattened case we'd put the symlink in the appropriate subdir).
(eg, in FHS that would mean

/usr/bin/GNUMail --> /usr/lib/GNUstep/Apps/GNUMail.app/{...}/GNUMail)

That way, if you want to start GNUMail.app (for example) you can just type

$> GNUMail

instead of having to go through

$> openapp GNUMail.app

(openapp would still be there and work with all its advanced options for you 
power users!). ;-)

I think that makes a difference.  Not only would the application start faster, 
but if you know nothing about GNUstep, you could probably guess how to start it 
without having to read
the instructions (real users don't read the instructions)! ;-)

Otherwise I feel we'll lose a lot of potential users who do 'apt-get install 
GNUMail.app', then try to start the app but can't figure out how to do it 
because it's installed in the uncommon /usr/lib/GNUstep/Apps/ directory and 
it's not even an executable but needs 'openapp' to start ... so after spending 
about 30 seconds trying to figure that out the average end user would just give 
up and
try something else.

Any objections to me adding this symlink ?

Presumably if symlinks are not available or not good (eg, on Windows) we'd not 
create the symlink.

Thanks



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