[Bf-committers] Setting a default system scripts directory
Campbell Barton
ideasman42 at gmail.com
Sat Sep 19 14:56:56 CEST 2009
Hey Brecht,
In general thing your suggestions are good, cleaning up the home dir
came up before but I didnt want to confuse this proposal.
Though Id like to see this fixed too, should be done before 2.5.0
whatever happens.
reply inline...
On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 3:39 AM, Brecht Van Lommel <brecht at blender.org> wrote:
> Hi Campbell,
>
> I agree with the proposal basically. The folder ~/.blender should be
> the place for the user to configure & add things, while
> $PREFIX/share/blender or ./.blender should be used for files that come
> with it.
>
> One thing I'm not sure about is how to deal with different versions.
> My preference is to use /usr/local/share/blender/2.5 over
> /usr/local/share/blender-2.5, but that's a detail.
Ok with blender/2.5 vs blender-2.5, matches gimp more closely too
/usr/share/gimp/2.0
> Do we use a version number inside ~/.blender? I may be useful to let
> Blender look into ~/.blender/2.5 and then ~/.blender. This way you
> could install scripts for particular versions, but not necessarily
> worry about it if you don't want to.
I'm not fussed about this, I remember using some software a while ago
that used too many search paths and it made trying to solve peoples
problems online more tedious - having to ask if they had files in
different dirs etc.
Ill remain undecided.
> Further, I think we should move .B.blend, .Bfs and .Blog into
> ~/.blender. I think Ton wanted to split up .B.blend into parts also,
> it may be better to avoid writing too many files in the home directory
> and keep them together in a folder.
+100 (though not entirely related to this)
> On other operating systems we should also do a similar separation
> between user config and application, using whatever folder is
> appropriate. Not that I expect you to implement it, but may be nice to
> write the functions in such a way that other operating systems can
> plug in different paths.
yep, will try make it so adding other OS's isnt too hard.
- Campbell
> Brecht.
>
> On 9/19/09, Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> No reply but I thought over this a little more and have a proposal for
>> blender to better fit in with linux package management.
>> This closely matches The Gimp, which allows system python scripts and
>> user ones to coexist.
>>
>> Proposal in point form :)
>> * ~/.blender stays working, existing configurations wont need to change.
>> * An optional new DIR is defined for UNIX systems (not win/mac), for
>> brevity will call it SYS-PATH
>> * This dir could be named as follows $PREFIX/share/blender-$VERSION --
>> Eg. /usr/local/share/blender-2.5
>> * When the SYS-PATH directory is found it will be used as the primary
>> directory for scripts, language files, icons etc. (Otherwise
>> ~/.blender will be used like it is now)
>> * Scrips scan SYS-PATH first (if exists) then ~/.blender, other data
>> files only use one path (SYS-PATH and fall-back to ~/.blender)
>> ...In most cases using data from both dirs at once is not needed, (you
>> could conceivably want to access icon themes from ~/.blender &
>> SYS-PATH, but don't think its so important)
>> However, scripts are an exception, On a typical linux package you'd
>> have blender install all data files into /usr/share/blender-2.5 and
>> then when users want to add their own scripts they can copy into
>> /home/user/.blender/scripts.
>>
>>
>> Outcome...
>> * improves out-of-box experience for users by not treating built-in
>> files (eg, most of blender2.5s interface) as user settings/data.
>> * Less trouble to package blender (no scripts copying data to
>> ~/.blender on startup).
>> * Keep support for existing "local" installs where blender can run
>> without being installed.
>> * Packages will install all blender data in /usr/share/blender-2.5.x,
>> casual users will not create a ~/.blender, however ~/.B.blend will
>> still be saved into their home dir.
>> * Existing users who build and run blender dont need to change their
>> configuration.
>> * Package managers upgrading blender will remove system scripts and
>> replace with new ones, ~/.blender (if exists) is untouched.
>>
>> Details...
>> * Use a compile time option, like ./configure --prefix="/usr/local"
>> * $BLENDERPATH used like $PYTHONPATH, allow for non hard-coded
>> SYS-PATH (Better for re-distribution where users dont install into
>> /usr/share/.... etc. and don't copy scripts into ~/.blender). Typical
>> usage this would not need setting.
>> * Can implement this as opt-in to initially, later can review making it default.
>> * Will add an "install" target for cmake and scons.
>>
>>
>> - Campbell
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi, this is an old problem for linux/unix packages and Id like to
>> > solve this too... some things to think about.
>> >
>> > Should this be limited to scripts? - Might it be better to have the
>> > whole ~/.blender path scanned elsewhere (would include icons, language
>> > files, .bfont.ttf), otherwise packages still have to have some way to
>> > have blender find language files in a place other then the home
>> > folder.
>> >
>> > I'd propose one of 4 solutions, some of which have been suggested
>> > above, and on other occasions.
>> > 1) Do nothing
>> > - People packaging blender can have the ".blender" directory installed
>> > in some directory such as "/usr/share/blender", and use a shell
>> > wrapper script that copies these files into the home directory on
>> > startup if it doesn't exist.
>> > - One of the problems with this is when blender is upgraded, the users
>> > home holder wont be, unless the startup shell script detects versions.
>> > - If this becomes the recommended method we must have some way to
>> > support updates. maybe copy to ~/.blender-2.5 (gimp has versions like
>> > this)
>> >
>> > 2) System wide data files (as well as ~/.blender)
>> > - This boils down to having blender look in a fixed path for data
>> > files (including scripts)
>> > - This directory will be used if ~/.blender is not found (which is the
>> > case mostly for freshly installed packages), works much nicer for
>> > updating packages too since users wont have stale copies.
>> > - At compile time set a prefix (like /usr/share/blender/2_49b),
>> > similar to --prefix="/usr", often use with ./configure; make; make
>> > install autoconf setups.
>> > - PROBLEM, both /usr/share/blender AND /home/User/.blender cant both
>> > be used at the same time (wont go into details but think this is a
>> > recipe for disaster).
>> >
>> > 3) Environment variable or argument eg. $BLENDER_DATA
>> > have an environment variable (or command line argument) $BLENDER_DATA
>> > thats overrides $HOME (when set).
>> > - This allows for most flexibility, package startup scripts can point
>> > to whatever location they like, check its there, etc.
>> > - It would need to save .B.blend and .Blog in $HOME and look for data
>> > files in $BLENDER_DATA
>> > - Still doesn't solve system + user scripts.
>> >
>> > 4) Only solve for scripts
>> > Have an env var / argument that scans another path for scripts when
>> > set. I dont like this much because it only solves one problem but if
>> > we did this, the scripts could at least co-exist by scanning both the
>> > system and user scripts.
>> >
>> > -----
>> >
>> > Personally Id go for 2 or 3, If we go for 3 (an env variable), Id like
>> > to include a startup shell script that makes use of this in a way we'd
>> > recommend packagers follow so they don't all go and do their own
>> > thing.
>> >
>> > This isn't especially hard, if we agree on one I can look into adding
>> > it for 2.49c or 2.5x
>> >
>> > On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 8:35 PM, <michael at obberon.com> wrote:
>> >> On Saturday 12 September 2009 20:10:09 Roger Wickes wrote:
>> >>> curious - which one of those is your user setting in the folder user
>> >>> preferences tab? Secondly, that list does not seem to include the
>> >>> bpymodules folder??
>> >>
>> >> I did not change the user setting, so I believe that it is the default,
>> >> ~/.blender. The reason the list turned out the way it did was because on my
>> >> system, ~/.blender did not exist, so it fell back to /usr/bin/.blender, and
>> >> then finally /usr/bin/release/scripts (in case the user ran the executable
>> >> from the source directory). With the directory created, blender does check
>> >> the ~/.blender/scripts directory, along with
>> >> ~/.blender/scripts/bpymodules, but does not bother checking anything in
>> >> /usr/bin.
>> >>
>> >> However, this is not the point I was trying to make. There still should be
>> >> a way to specify a system directory that should also be checked.
>> >> --
>> >> Michael Forney <michael at obberon.com>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Bf-committers mailing list
>> >> Bf-committers at blender.org
>> >> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > - Campbell
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> - Campbell
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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