Re: Mac OS X, 22.0.91, configure without --enable-carbon-app

[Benjamin Riefenstahl <b.riefenstahl@turtle-trading.net>]

Hi Yamamoto,


>>>>>> On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 23:28:22 +0100, Benjamin Riefenstahl
> <b.riefenstahl@turtle-trading.net> said:
>
>> Ideally of course, I would like to have --enable-carbon-app follow
>> --prefix, when I give --prefix.
>
>>>>>> On Fri, 24 Nov 2006 12:50:09 +0100, Benjamin Riefenstahl
> <b.riefenstahl@turtle-trading.net> said:
>
>> So --enable-carbon-app is not supposed to be the default on Mac?  I
>> would have thought that would be the natural setting.

YAMAMOTO Mitsuharu writes:
> I'm confused because the above two look inconsistent.

That's because they are :-(.  The Mac OS X way of handling
installations of applications and the traditional Unix way do not
agree.

Let me give my expectations in order of priority:

a) When I compile Emacs on Mac OS X using the defaults, I expect to
   get an Emacs according to the customs of that OS.  That means I
   expect that "make install" puts an Emacs.app into /Applications.  I
   would think this also is the expectation of other users, especially
   those that do not have prior experience in Unix.

b) When I give a --prefix arg to ./configure, I expect that everything
   is put there that "make install" creates, including Emacs.app
   (probably in a subdirectory Applications).

c) I don't have any preconceived expectations about how
   --enable-carbon-app behaves, with or without an argument.

To implement these, I guess I would do away with --disable-carbon-app
(we still do have --without-carbon), just call it --carbon-appdir and
document it as:

  --carbon-appdir=DIR  specify install directory for Emacs.app on Mac
                       OS X [/Applications or, iff --prefix is given,
                       PREFIX/Applications]

Examples:

  $ ./configure
  => carbon_appdir=/Applications

  $ ./configure --prefix=path
  => carbon_appdir=$prefix/Applications

  $ ./configure [--prefix=path1] --carbon-appdir=path2
  => carbon_appdir=path2

  $ ./configure [--prefix=path1] --without-carbon
  => carbon_appdir=

If you think this is too complicated to explain, one could drop the
interaction with --prefix.

> Which destination of Emacs.app do you think is natural when no
> options are provided, /usr/local/Applications or /Applications?

/usr/local/Applications has no significance in Mac OS X AFAIK, so I
think nobody looks there for installed applications.  Users are used
to manipulate stuff in /Applications manually, it's not considered
much of a system directory, so installing there should be ok.


benny