Re: *PATH variables

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 09:18  am, Alexey I. Froloff wrote:

> First of all - Happy New Year, Steppers ;-)
>
> GNUstep.* "startup" are changing *PATH shell variables by
> adding GNUstep paths before system. I don't think this is The
> Right Thing(tm), since GNUstep tools can be named like system
> utils. gsnd, for example - in GNUstep this is a sound service,
> but gsnd also exists in ghostscript (gsnd - Run ghostscript
> (PostScript and PDF engine) without display according to man
> gsnd).
>
> I think it's better add entries to end of *PATH's. Something
> like that:
>
> PATH="$PATH:/User:/Local:/Network:/System"
>
> instead of:
>
> PATH="/User:/Local:/Network:/System:$PATH"
>
> Patch for -make attached, but I'm nos sure if it's 100% right
> for csh since i don't use it.

I'm not at all sure about this ...

It seems to me quite reasonable that GNUstep directories should be 
inserted at the start of the path ... so the GNUstep tools will be 
found in preference to other versions.  If you are running GNUstep that 
seems quite likely to be what you want.

On the other hand, most GNUstep applications/tools should not be using 
PATH, (they would use NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains() instead), 
so the PATH would only be relevant when starting things from the unix 
command line.

So, while I'm not against making this change (I think I'm for it), 
neither am I wholly sure it would be a good thing.
Other possibilities might be ...
1. try to ensure that GNUstep tool names don't conflict with other tool 
names (gsnd is the only case I've heard of)
2. check and warn about conflicts when GNUstep.sh is run (probably too 
slow to be a realistic solution)

Renaming gsnd is probably a good idea ... it doesn't seem too clever to 
conflict with ghostscript.