Re: The load path

[Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net>]

Andy Wingo wrote:

>I disagree. When a user downloads an app, builds it and installs it,
>they should be able to run it. On all configure scripts that I know
>of, /usr/local is the default prefix. This is fine for C code: the
>compiler will pick up headers, libs, and binaries from /usr/local, even
>if the compiler comes from the distribution. Why should guile be any
>different? Or to take your argument to its conclusion, why
>include /usr/share/guile/site in the load path? After all, the distro
>won't put anything there.
>  
>
I agree: when Guile is built and installed using "configure; make; make 
install", the default load path should certainly include /usr/local.  
That's not quite what I was addressing though; I was talking about the 
case where everything on a machine is there through package management - 
in this case /usr/local isn't needed because there isn't anything in 
/usr/local.

My thinking was, that as soon as you have a user who is prepared to do 
"configure; ...", you have a user who can edit init.scm to add any load 
path that isn't already there.  (E.g. the case where Guile is installed 
as a package, so is in /usr, but the user builds and installs an add-on 
.tar.gz themselves in /usr/local.)

>Even for modules implementing functionality of an app, that aren't part
>of its public interface?
>
Yes, absolutely!

> My instinct is to hide them, because then I
>know they won't cause me problems in the future if someone uses them
>somehow.
>  
>
But surely "using them somehow" is what Free Software is all about?

Regards,
    Neil




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