Re: Plugin Package Paths

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi,

Peter Polidoro <peter@polidoro.io> writes:

> What is the proper way to package plugins when a packaged program
> searches for them in the executable path rather than the profile path?
>
> I would like to package plugins for two programs, kicad and freecad,
> and they both search for plugins by first finding the path of the
> executable. Freecad uses /proc/self/exe and kicad uses
> wxStandardPaths::GetExecutablePath. This seems to cause them to look
> for plugins in the package path in the store rather than the profile
> path.
>
> What is the proper way of handling this when packaging plugins? Should
> the package of the main program modify the source code to find the
> path of the executable using the environment variable GUIX_ENVIRONMENT
> rather than /proc/self/exe or wxStandardPaths::GetExecutablePath? Or
> can these calls be tricked with hard links somehow? Or is there some
> other better way of dealing with this?

These programs should be patched to honor e.g. FREECAD_PLUGINS_PATH or
similar.  Then a 'native-search-path' specification can be attached to
the freecad packaged, and finding freecad plugins will happen in any
profile.

The FREECAD_PLUGINS_PATH should be written with the intent of
upstreaming it (sharing it for inclusion with upstream), as that should
be valuable to other distributions/scenarios as well.

-- 
Thanks,
Maxim