Re: [XBoard-devel] git issues

[Michel Van den Bergh]

h.g. muller wrote:
> > A freshly installed user program that wants to write by default to a 
> > system configuration file (i.e. one in the /etc directory) would be 
> > *very* uncommon in Linux (and against the very idea of system 
> > configuration files which are supposed to be shared by all users).
> >
> > There is usually system wide configuration file (or directory) 
> > created at install time and a user specific one created when the user 
> > runs the program for the first time. For example I have 
> > /etc/firefox-3.5 and ~/.mozilla/firefox-3.5/   (and  I wouldn't 
> > expect firefox to dump a configuration file in every
> > directory I run it from....).
> >
> > In easy cases it is possible to dispense with the system wide 
> > configuration file.
>
> Well, you say the magic word: "installed". As long as they use "make 
> install",
> and we make sure this creates the /etc/xboard/xboard.conf, defining a 
> default for
> the user settings file, everything works smoothly. They would only 
> have problems
> when they do not properly install xboard.

Then there is a misunderstanding. I thought you proposed that the user
would himself have to edit the system wide configuration file.
> When /etc/xboard/xboard.conf contains the lines:
>
> -saveSettingsFile ~/.xboard/xboard.conf
> -settingsFile ~/.xboard/xboard.conf
>
> a user would only get complaints on saving when ~/.xboard did not 
> exist, and
> presumably he would be able to figure out how to solve that. (The 
> alternative
> would be to make XBoard iteratively try to create all directories in 
> the path.)
It think the last alternative would be what is customary provided the
user specific config file is in a standard location. If the user wants to
put the config file in an exotic location then it would be ok I think to 
leave it up to him to ensure
that this is possible.

In polyglot
I just try to create the requested config directory (for engine specific 
config files). This works if the parent exists which would be the case 
if the parent was ~ which is the case
for the default ~/.polyglot/.

Recursively trying to create the directory path should not be hard but is
probably not necessary.



> And crazy users like me would be happy as well, because they would simply
> change the ~/.xboard/xboard.conf into ./xboard.ini, to get the 
> behavior they
> desire.