Re: GNUSTEP_USER_CONFIG problem (Windows)

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 5 Dec 2005, at 10:53, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> > I'm over fed-up with environment variable.
> > When an environment stop working (because of new developement)  
> > nothing warn the developer (I mean the compiler don't know). Its  
> > application simply stop working without warning, without message,  
> > without cause.
> >
> > I think I could safely say now that environment variable are  
> > inherently evil and should not be the only configuration method. A  
> > programatic interface should exist to fix any problem!
> > In this case a programatic way to set GNUSTEP_CONFIG_FILE.
>
> When Nicola and I designed the new config stuff, we tried to make  
> it extremely flexible while keeping it really simple.  I'm not sure  
> why we left in the option of using an environment variable to  
> specify the location of the config file ... and I think you have  
> convinced me that it's an annoying complexity and should be removed.

Ah ... I take it back ... I have remembered why it was there ... it  
was intended as an aide to development/testing so you can have  
multiple setups running simultaneously using the same libraries/ 
resources, just slecting between them by setting the environment  
variable before launching the app you are working with.
Perhaps documenting this well (and making the configuration with the  
environment variable disabled be the default) would be sufficient  
rather than removing the functionality entirely.  I'm not sure  
whether the feature is more trouble than it's worth?

> Of course, you don't need a programmatic way to set  
> GNUSTEP_CONFIG_FILE ... you just set it when you build the make or  
> base libraries using --with-config-file=
> It's something that needs to be set for the make package and for  
> the base library, not for an individual application (if an app  
> needed that level of isolation from other apps, it would be bundled  
> with its own copy of the core libraries).