Re: Changes I've been thinking of...

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 8 Oct 2009, at 12:00, David Chisnall wrote:

> On 8 Oct 2009, at 11:50, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
>
> > > - How does this allow a packager to install and remove defaults as  
> > > part of package installation / uninstallation?  Presumably you can  
> > > use plmerge to install them (again, is this documented anywhere?),  
> > > but how do you uninstall them?
> >
> > This is a text property list ... a packager would manage it in  
> > exactly the same way as any other text file they install/uninstall  
> > with their packaging system.
> > Probably something as simple as 'rm -rf /etc/GNUstep' when you are  
> > removing GNUstep from your system.
>
> You misunderstand the question.  Here's a concrete example:
>
> Camaelon, EtoileBehavior and EtoileMenu all provide appkit user  
> bundles.  They are each installed as separate packages.  A person  
> creating a package for them wants to make them default for every  
> user.  This requires:
>
> 1) When the package is installed, each needs to be added to the  
> NSGlobalDomain GSUserAppKitBundles array.
>
> 2) When the package is uninstalled, each needs to be removed from  
> the array.
>
> Step 1 can, I believe, be accomplished with plmerge.  How would you  
> go about doing step 2?

You are right, I did misunderstand ... I understood the term  
'packager' to refer to the person/people responsible for providing  
GNUstep with a distribution ... ie for a set of packages which are all  
intended to work together as part of an entire system (such as Ubuntu)  
and where the 'packager' would reasonably be expected to set policy  
for all users of the system.

I think what you are suggesting is probably (usually at least)  
undesirable ... a person providing a single package of their own piece  
of software should probably *not* be setting policy for the system and  
therefore should not be setting global defaults.

However, for the scenario you are suggesting the answer is still  
pretty much the same ... the packager could do it the same way as with  
most other software ... edit the file using standard unix tools such  
as sed and awk.   Of course, we could provide specific utilities like  
plmerge, but 'standard' unix techniques of marking sections of the  
file with comments and removing/inserting stuff between those comments  
would work just fine.