Re: bug in NSUserDefaults

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On Sunday, February 10, 2002, at 08:17 AM, Erik Dalen wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
>
> > On Saturday, February 9, 2002, at 11:19 PM, Erik Dalen wrote:
> >
> > > hi
> > >
> > > I've spent the last few hours trying to install GNUstep with
> > > GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT=~ instead of =~/GNUstep
> > > and I've noticed that there's a quite serious but in NSUserDefaults, 
> > > the
> > > GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT is hardcoded in it.
> >
> > I don't think that's a bug ... the GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT environment
> > variable is
> > intended to define one of the places where you can fine application,
> > libraries
> > and other resources.  That doesn't mean that *all* resources will or
> > should
> > be stored there.
> but it automatically creates ~/GNUstep for the .GNUstepdefaults. And 
> then
> it creates ~/GNUstep/Library for the font-cacher. Even though that one
> (should) use ~/Library in my case.

Actually, I think the font caching code does that, not the defaults code.
That might be considered a bug in the font cacher ... not sure.

> Also if it should have a fixed location for .GNUstepdefaults, why not 
> have
> it in ~/ ? It would be hidden anyway, and that would take away the need
> for creating the ~/GNUstep directory when it's not needed.

Because that's not the standard location.  The GNUstep directory is used
as standard to keep things clearly in one place ... it's up to the user
to then mess that up if they wish :-)

> > The thing about defaults is they need to be both private and writable, 
> > so
> > you really can't work with other peoples defaults, and if your program 
> > is
> > running setuid so that the user it's running as is not the same as the
> > one it was started as, it needs to change where it gets/puts defaults
> > info.  This means it has to compute the location of the defaults - it
> > might well use different defaults databases during oen program run, and
> > using any environment variable would be bound to be wrong for all but 
> > one
> > of them.
>
> Well, most GNUstep installations would have the same user root.
> make-services in System/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh wouldn't funtcion well
> otherwise. As you can't set another USER_ROOT before running GNUstep.sh,
> and it would be quite pointless to set another after running GNUstep.sh

I'm not sure what you are saying here.  Perhaps you are making a case for
removing the GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT environment variable?  I'm not sure that 
it's
very useful myself.
One interesting option would be to keep the defaults in a standard 
location
for each user as at present, and have the defaults database contain a 
value
to do what GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT does now - essentially specify where apps 
and
their resources are to be found.  However, defaults really *are* a 
special
case ... there is a mechanism for the application to be notified when 
they
change (letting the app update cached info it read from the defaults
system earlier).  There is no such standard mechanism to let the app know
that standard file paths have changed.

PS. have to go out for the day now ... if you want to talk further, don't
expect a prompt response.