Re: Modified load-path proposal

[Neil Jerram]

Greg Troxel <address@hidden> writes:

> We need remove-load-path too, for cleanup.

OK.

(Actually, "add" should probably be "ensure", and only add the
directory if not already in config; and "remove" should probably be
"cleanup", and only do anything if there is nothing left under the
relevant directory; but those are next-level details.)

> It's not clear to me how the default version of config shows up in a
> fresh guile build/install.  I'd argue that only the traditional three
> dirs in prefix should be there by default.

Yes, agreed.  (The default config.scm could be provided in the distro,
or could be generated during the make.)

>  Perhaps configure can have
> a "--add-load-path /usr/local/share/guile" to make the install search
> this, and this can be invoked by packaging systems that want it.  By

I don't think we need this, because it's equivalent to just running
guile-config add-load-path once after the install.

>   ;; 5. Code for GUILE_SCHEME_DIR autoconf macro
>
> This doesn't support the notion of putting things in
> $(prefix)/share/guile, and adding that to the load path of the
> existing guile when you do install.

Yes it does (I think).  If that's what you want, you just write your
Makefile.am like this ...

scmdatadir = $(datadir)/guile
scmdata_DATA = whatever1.scm whatever2.scm

... and add an extra install step (for which I forget the syntax)
that does

     guile-config add-load-path mydata $(datadir)/guile "My Location"

Am I still missing something?

>  Perhaps setting that up should be
> a standard pre-step before building the new package, but I believe
> that a package configured with --prefix=/usr/foo should only write to
> /usr/foo.  I realize others disagree, but I'd like the mechanisms to
> support this behavior.  perhaps the tag for /usr/foo/share/guile
> should be /usr/foo, so packages can search for a load dir by their
> prefix.  Perhaps there should be an optional argument that returns the
> path now and causes creation of it at make install time.

I don't see your point - can you be more concrete?

Thanks,
        Neil