Re: installing apps automatically in the ~/GNUstep/Apps folder

[Martin Brecher]

Hi Nicola, -

>Ok - if a normal user is not supposed to edit makefiles (which makes
>sense as an assumption), I suppose the installation instructions might
>recommend to type
>
>make install GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DIR=${GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT}
>
>rather than `make install' to install the application locally in the
>user home directory.
>
>If this line is too long, 

Yeah, that's too long for a normal/novice user to remember, I guess.
You have to think of someone that does maybe know how to do some basic
actions with the shell, extracting a package is daily business, and
typing make and make install is easy to remember (because it's short
and logical) but anything beyond that might just lead to confusion.

[...]

>Perhaps we could extend this to be something like 
>
>make install install-into=system
>make install install-into=local
>make install install-into=network
>make install install-into=user

yeah, that sounds good; or maybe installdir= or just dir= ?

[...]

>The admin might also do something else - there is a 
>
>/usr/GNUstep/System/Makefiles/Additional
>
>directory.  All makefiles *.make in that directory are loaded
>automatically when the make package is starting.  So an admin might
>add a custom makefile there, which checks whether the user has
>permission to write to GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DIR, and if the user
>hasn't it, it overrides GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DIR with
>GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT.  I suppose it might actually work. :-)

Wow. I will try that.

>    >>> I was playing around a bit on my gstep system and noticed that
>    >>> openapp also searches the ~/GNUstep/Apps folder, now I have a
>    >>> question: When doing 'make install' for an application, would
>    >>> it be possible that the make prorgam checks whether the
>    >>> executing user is authorized to write to the system wide Apps
>    >>> direcotries, and - if not - automatically installs the program
>    >>> in the users ~/GNUstep/Apps folder?
>
>Ok - I really wouldn't add this to the standard make package, because
>otherwise what will happen is that if a user has something which he
>wants to install into /usr/GNUstep/Local or /usr/GNUstep/System, what
>happens is that
>
> - if he installs as root, it goes in the correct location;
>
> - if he installs without being root (because he forgets about su and 
>   types `make install' without being root) it goes into ~/GNUstep;
>

What you could add to the make package is a check whether the user can
write to the directory he attempts to install something in. If he is
unpreviliged the make command should abort and give the user an easy to
understand (localized ;-) ) message and point out the possibilities
with the install-into or GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DIR parameters. That
would prevent the user from being confused by some tar or cp or
whatever errors - instead the user learns that he can easily install
the pakage into his user directory by using the related parameter to
make install. This way the user would still keep control and no
accidentially installed stuff would bring chaos to his system.


>so he can easily end up with some library or application which is
>installed twice in different places (and when he installs it again,
>he's got it installed twice with two different versions).  That is
>normally a cause of much grief both for the user and for whoever the
>user asks to for help when things don't work as expected.  And even if
>the user realizes the mistake, he still has to uninstall the thing
>manually from ~/GNUstep ... (well perhaps that would be a good
>occasion to test and probably fix `make uninstall' ;-) ).  [When I
>talk about a user I mostly talk about myself as I do a lot of mistakes
>when I'm tired, and would like the make package not to allow me to
>make too much of a mess when I do a mistake such as installing with
>the wrong permissions]

on my GNUstep test box I have some stuff installed in Local and System
and I get a message when I load the makefile pakage that certain apps
are duplicate (it even gives me the names :-) ).
Make uninstall worked for some app I uninstalled. But I don't know
if/how this works with different versions.


Damn. I need some sleep.

Greetings,
Martin
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