On Mon, 4 May 2020 08:32:59 -0700 (PDT), Norman Megill <[email protected]> wrote: > While I'm not sure of the best way to go forward, let me explain why set.mm > and the metamath program are currently in the same directory. ... > Putting both into one directory allows an unsophisticated Windows user to > click on metamath.exe and type "read set.mm". This goes back to the days > before the Metamath site existed, when the only access to set.mm was via > the program, so it was important to make getting started as simple and > quick as possible for such users.
I think this makes historical sense, but now that set.mm and metamath-exe are being routinely updated on GitHub I think that structure has outlived its usefulness. The *easiest* way to keep up-to-date with set.mm is to pull from GitHub, which means that set.mm should be in its own directory. If set.mm & metamath-exe are in the same directory, it's easy to stomp on each other, potentially losing work in progress. If someone really wants put them in one directory, that's fine, but that shouldn't be the default install; that's something you should configure yourself because you want to do that & you know what you're doing. There are many ways to deal with paths. It's not *that* complex, and there are only really two cases: POSIX (the standard) and "Windows". All the POSIX systems basically work the same way (Linux, Unix, MacOS, cygwin). I think it's better to update the instructions so that people deal with paths (or whatever) only during install, and then everything 'just works". There are many ways to do this, but trying to merge data into a single directory, when they're updated at different times, is becoming an obstacle. Package managers can do that just fine, but we don't need to write a package manager just for Metamath :-). --- David A. Wheeler -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Metamath" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/metamath/E1jVdvr-0007Ri-FN%40rmmprod06.runbox.
