Re: Package paths and relocatable binary kits
Vin Shelton <acs(a)xemacs.org> writes:
to be found at run-time, the builder of the 21.4 kit must either: 1)
know an absolute path where the packages will be installed or 2) the
packages must be installed under the root of the XEmacs 21.4 tree.
... or you set appropriate environment variables, but I'm sure you
know that.
As far as I understand, assuming I want the users to be able to
install to arbitrary locations, I can fix this in either of 2 ways:
1) I can install the packages underneath the 21.4.18 hierarchy or
2) I can set EMACSPACKAGEPATH (either through the registry or an
environment variable) to point to the package hierarchy.
Both of those solutions are slightly problematic from my point of
view: #1 is kind of aesthetically yucky (the packages and the core are
distinct and I don't want to install my packages underneath my core)
and besides, I'd like to be able to install multiple cores (21.4.18,
21.4.19 and 21.5.b23, for instance) in parallel directories and not
force each one to have its own package tree. #2 currently does not
seem to work identically for 21.4 and 21.5 - "xemacs-packages" gets
appended to EMACSPACKAGEPATH for 21.4 but not for 21.5.
Do you mean that "xemacs-packages" *needs* to be appended ...? If so,
there's something funky here.
Other than that, I suppose solution #2 works, but it would be nice
not to have to have to set the envariable; it's one more thing that
can go wrong in the user's installation.
Michael - do you have any suggestions or insights?
I think you still should try to convince XEmacs to find the packages
at run-time, based on where the executable is. That's generally the
most robust approach. The trick is to make it recognize a "root", and
the path-searching machinery will take over from there. You should
look at `paths-emacs-root-p' and `paths-find-emacs-root' for places to
tweak---this shouldn't be hard if you're just doing Windows and don't
have to worry about Unix. (We can sort all that out later.) In
particular, `paths-find-emacs-root' should probably go up at least two
directories.
I don't know if this helps---let me know if I can do more.
--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla