Re: Associating bundle directories with app

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 20 Jan 2011, at 18:25, David Chisnall wrote:

> Hi Richard,
> 
> On 20 Jan 2011, at 15:02, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> 
>> Yes.  It has to be done on a per-user basis, since the locations that 
>> applications/services live in vary from user to user.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure I understand this argument.  Isn't this the same as allowing 
> defaults to be set in GNUstep.conf (e.g. so the administrator can set the 
> default theme for all users)?  Per-user defaults override systemwide defaults 
> in both cases.  If an application is installed by the system administrator, 
> then I would expect it to be the default application for all users, unless 
> they have explicitly provided an alternative setting.

Yes, if you like, placing an app in the system domain is equivalent to setting 
a default in GNUstep.conf 
And yes, the user domain apps override/replace the system domain ones ... 

so to find the app a user should use, we *must* look in the user domain 
(because anything found there will override the system domain apps) and cached 
information has to be stored on a per-user basis (because the cached 
information may contain information about apps in the user domain).

> The reason for not automatically generating these settings on OS X[1] is 
> security - you don't want a user clicking on some link, getting a .app 
> bundle, and finding that it's a trojan that installs itself as a the default 
> file handler for all of your file types.  If the system administrator is 
> performing the installation, then this does not apply; if root is installing 
> trojans then you have bigger problems than GNUstep's file associations.
> 
> One of the issues that is always raised with regard to GNUstep adoption is 
> the quality of GNUstep packagers, and if we can make life easier for 
> packagers then this seems like a good thing to do...

I'd say the current situation is easy for packagers ... in order for the 
filetype associations to work the packager has to do ... nothing whatsoever 
(apart from putting the apps in the normal locations of course).