Re: Package format/management ramblingss

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

       For example, say we have a program foo that needs the gnu.xpm
       picture that is distributed in emacs.  This file would be the
       virtual file /share/emacs/etc/gnu.xpm.

   Why would it be there?  I don't understand that part of your idea.
   Why would Emacs put that particular file into /share/emacs in any
   manner, even virtually?

   Maybe you should describe your overall idea for /share/emacs in a
   different way.

My idea was/is that /share/emacs would be /packages/*/share/emacs.
I.e. more or less what it is now.  And containing files that can be
shared between programs and architectures.  What these files might be
isn't important though.

This is the trzaditional usage of (/usr)/share.

   The images in Emacs are for Emacs alone to use, they are internal
   files.  Right now Emacs puts them into a shared directory because
   that's the only way for an installed Emacs to get at them, but that
   isn't very clean.

So you want to introduce a shared-internal-data directory?


I atleast was only using Emacs as a general case, since it is how most
GNU programs look when it comes to the file system layout.  What the
program puts in its /share directory was to me irrelevant.  Same as
how the program would use the data, or how other programs use it.
Only important detail was that it contained files that could be shared
between programs (I see that the GNU Coding Standards have redefined
datadir a bit though...)


Happy hacking.