Re: NSHomeDirectory() problems on windows

[thisguyisi]

I don't see the point of using %USERPROFILE% for windows systems, since 
that is an internal Windows mechanism. Personally I think that a Home 
directory system like you seen in UNIX/ GNU/Linux would have been a 
better mechanism for Microsoft to have implemented.

I spent a couple of weeks playing with a Windows 98SE installation, and 
a Windows 2000 Professional installation, trying to figure out how to 
hack the registry to implement the LSFH.v.1.3 (LinuxSTEP Filesystem 
Hierarchy) for the profiles, and it was a nightmare. Gave up after two 
weeks. Managed partial successes during a login after changed settings, 
only to have Windows "resurrect" "default settings" that I was unable to 
change. Unable to make changes to "default" user profile in either and 
successfully get them to apply when a new user was created.

I'm of the mind that, being GNUstep is intended as a cross-platform 
environment, that environment should follow universal GNUstep 
configuration mechanisms regardless of the Host OS. Additionally, as 
OPENSTEP NT Enterprise used the $HOMEDRIVE/$HOMEPATH mechanism, that 
mechanism should be maintained; obviously it was NeXT's choice, and was 
functional.

Why add funky spices for a specific platform in the stew of something 
destined for cross-platform consistency and functionality? Let Host OS 
internal mechanisms remain seperate. The profile implemetations from 
Win95/98/Me and WinNT/Win2K and WinXP are all a bit different from each 
other. It's not like Microsoft makes Windows internals to any kind of 
published spec. Is it worth the effort to keep chasing their changes to 
the profile mechanism from one version of Windows to the next?

Sorry to blabber on, more like 50 cents than 2, but I thought I should 
mention it after the headache I went through trying to get Windows to do 
anything other than its default behaviour.

-thisguyisi

Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:

> On Monday, July 21, 2003, at 02:20 PM, Roland Schwingel wrote:
>
> > Hi...
> >
> > A while ago in NSUser.m the way changed how the users homedirectory 
> > is depicted. Before this change the implementation was much like the 
> > Openstep for Windows one. Constructing it out of  $HOMEPATH and 
> > $HOMEDRIVE. Now it is changed to first query $USERPROFILE (which so 
> > violates the OpenStep specification). And if not found fall back to 
> > old (in my eyes correct implementation).
> >
> > By the way there is maybe a bug in the current implementation for 
> > asking $USERPROFILE. After retrieving the environmentvariable it is 
> > checked to not contain spaces. Well at least in german versions of 
> > Windows 2000 and Windows XP there are spaces by default. $USERPROFILE 
> > in german versions of windows always contains "Dokumente und 
> > Einstellungen". So it would be never used here, but elsewehere....
>
>
> That's because the makefile package *must* agree with the base library 
> about the users home directory, and spaces in paths used by make can 
> easily break the package ... we can't accept a directory path 
> containing spaces for the home directory.
>
> I think the default setup in english has spaces in there too ... so 
> I'm not sure that there is much point using $USERPROFILE at all... it 
> probably doesn't work for the vast majority of users.
>
> > I personally hate the way windows userprofiles work. We use 
> > NSHomeDirectory() here as basepath for our resources, which should 
> > never ever reside in the userprofile at least because of their size. 
> > So we really rely on this to not point to $USERPROFILE.
> >
> > So what to do? I think this wasn't changed out of pure fun... Even I 
> > would like to have it back again to be compliant to the openstep for 
> > windows version, I suggest to make it eventually switchable. For 
> > example using a new environment variable (eg. 
> > GNUSTEP_WIN32_HOMEDIRSTYLE). If it is missing (or set to "profile") 
> > the current behaviour is used. If set to eg. "openstep" it is no 
> > longer queried for $USERPROFILE instead the HOMEPATH/HOMEDRIVE 
> > variant will be used directly...
>
>
> I think this was changed because a windows user said it should work 
> that way (since it's microsofts official method for finding the home 
> directory), and nobody on the discussion list said otherwise.  I'd 
> quite happily either remove the usage of USERPROFILE altogether, (as I 
> don't know if it's ever usable in practice).
> What do other windows users think?
>
>
>
>
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