Re: Writing journal and output file to current directory

[Michel Boaventura]

The other solution would be install the program in the user folder,
but each user of the machine will need to install it.
In a big network this should be a problem. It will be hard to
implement? Because we can tell people that for now pspp only works
in a world writable folder and let this problem for now.

2008/10/15 Ben Pfaff <address@hidden>:
> If running a program sets the current directory to the program's
> installation directory, then the natural question is: What is a
> good default place to put PSPP's output files?
>
> In Unix, one might default to the user's home directory.  As for
> Windows, I see the following code in gnulib in lib/glob.c, which
> purports to find a user's home directory in Windows:
>
>    #  ifdef WINDOWS32
>              /* Windows NT defines HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH.  But give 
> preference
>                 to HOME, because the user can change HOME.  */
>              if (home_dir == NULL || home_dir[0] == '\0')
>                {
>                  const char *home_drive = getenv ("HOMEDRIVE");
>                  const char *home_path = getenv ("HOMEPATH");
>
>                  if (home_drive != NULL && home_path != NULL)
>                    {
>                      size_t home_drive_len = strlen (home_drive);
>                      size_t home_path_len = strlen (home_path);
>                      char *mem = alloca (home_drive_len + home_path_len + 1);
>
>                      memcpy (mem, home_drive, home_drive_len);
>                      memcpy (mem + home_drive_len, home_path, home_path_len + 
> 1);
>                      home_dir = mem;
>                    }
>                  else
>                    home_dir = "c:/users/default"; /* poor default */
>                }
>    #  else
>
> If this algorithm were used to pick the default location for PSPP
> output files, would that be a worthwhile improvement?
>
> "Michel Boaventura" <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Programs made to windows usually are executed from it install folder
>> and they write all files in a user temp dir. To be able to run psppire
>> from other folder, we will need to put all it's dlls on a shared
>> folder, like c:\windows\system32, but it isn't a nice thing to do.
>> Another problem is that on a server or a network install, a lot of
>> users runs psppire at the same time, and those files will be overwrite
>> every time.
>>
>> Let's stop looking at this for now, because there other problems to
>> fix first, but I hope that you understand the problem better now.
>>
>> 2008/10/15 John Darrington <address@hidden>:
>>> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 01:33:13PM -0300, Michel Boaventura wrote:
>>>
>>>     Another issue is that psppire write files in the current directory.
>>>     This isn't good on windows, because usually a program stay on
>>>     c:\program files, witch isn't writable by default. So for windows we
>>>     need to tell psppire to write on a temporary folder.
>>>
>>>
>>> This has been discussed before, but I still don't understand the
>>> problem.
>>>
>>> Firstly, the only files that psppire writes to the current directory
>>> are the output file "psppire.txt" and the journal "pspp.jnl".  If it
>>> writes any others, that's a bug; please report it.  Those two files
>>> are not `temporary' in any sense.  They are the intended output of the
>>> program.
>>>
>>> Secondly, why are you changing directory to C:\Program Files ??
>>> Just because psppire is installed there, surely doesn't mean that you
>>> have to change to that directory in order to run it?  One would also
>>> have the same problem on GNU/Linux --- psppire would normally be
>>> installed in /bin, and if I were to type "cd /bin ; ./psppire" then
>>> I too would get errors.  But that's not how it works.  Run psppire
>>> from the home directory and everything should be fine.
>>>
>>> I don't have much experience with windows, so perhaps I'm missing
>>> something.  Can you try to elaborate this problem.
>>>
>>> J'
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> PGP Public key ID: 1024D/2DE827B3
>>> fingerprint = 8797 A26D 0854 2EAB 0285  A290 8A67 719C 2DE8 27B3
>>> See http://pgp.mit.edu or any PGP keyserver for public key.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
>>>
>>> iD8DBQFI9pf8imdxnC3oJ7MRAnaNAJoD300nAANPtJB+X+3Sg5DGbGESiwCfcI+7
>>> cw4c4Z/p6UVlWBJytef+F/E=
>>> =LU6k
>>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Ben Pfaff
> http://benpfaff.org
>