This subject was discussed a bit recently but I'd like to ask for input on some of these issues as they relate to OS X. In particular, Alexander had posted some opinions about this and I think I rather agree with him so I'm hoping he can share his thoughts on this.
First, lets ignore for the moment that I'm trying to produce a weird OS X application bundle thingy and assume that I was making a unix package of some kind. I'll use the FreeBSD ports system as an example only because I'm more familiar with it. In that case, I'd probably set things up to install all the binaries in /usr/local/bin, and then install a bunch of stuff in /usr/local/ share. At least that's how I believe things are done for current unix scid packages. The stuff in bin is no real issue, scripts and binaries in bin, done deal. It's the stuff in share that seems to leave room for packager preference. I've looked through the scid code somewhat but not being a seasoned scid veteran, I still don't know what each of the directories is used for. Specifically, looking through the install target in the unix makefile, there is: .../share/data .../share/books .../share/bases .../share/html So, what are each of these used for? In my world, this would be static stuff that is installed by the administrator and is not writable by the user, but I get the impression that this is not the case. Alexander, what do you normally do with these directories? What do you do with data that could be shared by users, stick it all in your .scid dir? Somewhere else? Additionally, in the install_engines target, there is: .../share/engines As I mentioned before, this kind of violates the filesystem hierarchy standards but I wouldn't know where else to put them other than in bin with the other executables. I, like Alexander, prefer to manage my engines separately. As I also mentioned before, though, I fully understand the desire to get some starter engines in there for folks that don't want to install them separately. My current darwin makefile allows bundling with or without them. Alexander, what do you do about the little craplets that some engines leave lying around? Do you handle that in your options/ configuration? Also, what do you do about engines that like to have auxiliary files like opening books or tablebases? Do you set a separate dir for each of them in the engine config? Anyway, the point of all this for me is to package things up for OS X in a reasonable way and I'm trying to understand the usual scid practices so that I can map them onto OS X. They are not so different from the standpoint of what should be writable and what should not. In general, nothing in this application bundle should be writable by users, though this seems to be violated by some apps more than I would like. One final thing that doesn't really affect other platforms. No matter where I put things within an application bundle, they would probably never find themselves on my path. Is this going to be a problem for me going forward? There are several scripts, etc., and to be honest I don't know the purpose of them all. Thanks for your time and thoughts, Garth ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Scid-users mailing list Scid-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/scid-users
