Attn: Install path debaters

[Gary E. Miller]

Yo Ian!

On Thu, 4 Jan 2018 12:07:01 -0600
Ian Bruene via devel <devel at ntpsec.org> wrote:

> On 01/04/2018 11:44 AM, Richard Laager via devel wrote:
> > I'm not convinced it's actually bad form. Can you elaborate on why
> > you see this as hideous?  
> 
> My understanding is that embedding paths into code like this is 
> something that Shouldn't Be Done unless absolutely necessary. It also 
> adds the complication of the build system having to edit the code. I
> may need to recalibrate my understanding.

I agree.  Let me give you a few examples from the gentoo world.

Gentoo is aa source based distro.  Most Gentoo users use the default
'emerge' system.  The 'emerge' system downloads the upstream source
to a package, then builds the package in a sandbox.  After the package
is built, several saanity checks are made to the results of the build.
Only after the results ar checked is the code copied to the final 
destination.

Any paths embedded in the results may result in breakage.  A trivial and
very obvious way to manage any embedded paths is required.

Some Gentoo fans do things in an even more complicated way.  The results
of the above described build, instead of being installed in the local
system, are installed in yet another sandbox.  The contents of that
sandbox are then all rolled up into a tar file.  That tar file can
then be copied to other hosts and installed into any of the usual
locations (/usr, /usr/local, ~/, etc.).

Once again, any paths embedded in the results may result in breakage.
One can not merely embed the final paths in the files as the
final paths can not be known at build time, and functional tests
are run on the code in many different locations.

This is partly why NTPsec needs to use the standard environmental
vairables to do the standard things in the standard ways.  This
applies to PATH, MANPATH, PYTHONPATH, INFOPATH, PKG_CONFIG_PATH, 
LD_LIBRARY_PATH, etc.

RGDS
GARY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
	gem at rellim.com  Tel:+1 541 382 8588

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    "If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it." - Lord Kelvin
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