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Re: GNUstep directory layout


From: Stefan Urbanek
Subject: Re: GNUstep directory layout
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 08:20:24 +0100

On 2002-09-12 00:01:31 +0200 Pascal Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com> wrote:

The installation or deinstallation  of a package (.pkg) involves, like
that of  a RPM, the  execution of scripts  to prepare or  complete the
action.  Granted,  for simple applications, there's no  need for these
scripts, and simply moving the application package (.app) is enough to
install or  deinstall.
But you  can imagine easily  more sophisticated systems needing  to do
things such as creating passwd/group entries, inserting crontab, inetd
or inittab entries,  or setting things up to load  a kernel module now
and at  boot time, etc.   An alternative could  be to do this  kind of
stuff from within the application, but it seems to me that's better to
do it  from an Installer.app  run once by  root rather than  by random
users launching the application.


I agree that some kind of packaging system is necessary. Now I can see an 
advantage of 'domains': Person runing Installer.app/Package.app can specify the 
domain where the package is going to be installed. Anyone can specify any 
location (System/Local/User) for installing, if he has sufficient access 
rights. Package information should be stored for example in 
DOMAIN/Library/Packages.
The packaging system does not have to deal with directories outside the 
domains: for gnustep as another environment there is already an packaging 
system for the OS, and for gnustep as stand-alone system, there should be 
symlinks for example from /usr/bin to /System/Tools.


(Which does not  remove that for simple application,  I too am happier
when I can just move the .app to the trash, but I always have a doubt:
is it really cleanly removed?)


For ordinary users this is still most convenient method of 
installing/uninstalling.  Application has:
   - Applications/application.app
   - Library/Application Support/application
   - user's defaults
If it clearly stated (in some document) where an application's stuff is stored 
(Library/Application Support), and the application behaves correctly, then if 
one wants to remove it, he removes also it's corresponding directory from 
Application Support. Still he does not have to remove those files for the case 
of instaling the application later again.

Stefan



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