[Bf-committers] Setting a default system scripts directory

[Campbell Barton]

@Kent, removed OS checks r23398. adding apple should be trivial (might
even work without changes)

Raphael, reply inline though some of your concerns are answered in the wiki
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/Blender2.5/Unix_FHS

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 8:38 AM, raphael <dwarf at free.fr> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Here's just a "end-user" point of view on this.
>
> I'm using linux since 10 years but i'm not a geek,
> my knowledge is basic. I know where the config files
> are, but i avoid to touch them.
>
> For most users like me, the .blender dir is not a
> config dir, because it contains the scripts dir -
> where you have to put "this great script found on internet".
Right, at the moment ~/.B.blend is for most of the config and
~/.blender stores mainly data.
the recent changes make ~/.blender optional it could be created first
time blender starts so users see its their to add scripts to.

> If this dir is in /usr/local or /usr/share, you
> have to play with sudo each time you need to tweak
> something in the script dir... annoying..
~/.blender still works and is searched for scripts even when the
system scripts are found.
basically system scripts should not be modified by the user, and the
user can install their own scripts they write or find online to their
home dir.

> An other thing, the UNIX tree is not the same on all linux
> distributions. Sometimes, you don't have /opt - which
> need root access to be created.
This option will most likely not be used for blender downloaded from
Blender.org, its mainly for linux distributions who want blender to
have system wide data files.
So the fact binaries built with this option are less portable wont
hurt blender.org builds.

The people who make the packages can set the directory when building
blender - CMake has CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX, SCons uses BF_INSTALLDIR

> If you have a .blender in /home/__user__, it's quite the same. You
> have to display hidden files to go there (
> numerous users won't never find it).. annoying too...
>
> Last week, i have installed MakeHuman, and it created
> a folder in my home dir
> /home/__me__/makehuman.
I see your point about ~/.blender being hidden and not ideal, one
thing that could help would be menu item in blender to manage &
install scripts so users dont have to deal with ~/.blender (Needed for
OSX too), this is a workaround, it could be called ~/blender too but
this isnt the unix way. Ugh!... I dont have a good solution for this.

> For my uses, it's the right place - It do not contains
> important files (the application can run without) and
> it's easy to find and remember where all my scripts and
> user settings are stored.
>
> hope it's clear, my English is basic
>
> regards
>
> raphael
> http://dwarf.free.fr
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Kent Mein a écrit :
>> In reply to Martin Poirier (theeth at yahoo.com):
>>
>> I'm responding to Martin's post here but also to other stuff mentioned
>> above.  I don't think we should exclude windows and OSX in this as
>> Campbell suggested in the first post.  OSX is a unix variant and should
>> behave just like the others. (I'm ok with not using .blender for OSX
>> but I think it should have a "SYSTEM DIR" and behave in the same way the
>> UNIX version does even if it uses slightly different directories to be more
>> Mac friendly.
>> I also think that unless your installing blender to /usr whatever you
>> shouldn't put the "SYSTEM DIR" in /usr if you put blender2.5 in say
>> /opt/blender2.5  the scripts and what not should be in there, not in
>> /usr/share/blender2.5, thats the way all the other software works, don't
>> just assume everyone is going to install it in a specific location...
>>
>>> Does that mean we're dropping support for having the .blender folder next to the binary? This is useful when running different branches with the same version number (think GSOC).
>>>
>>> If that's kept (I hope it is), I propose that <bin>/.blender takes priority over ~/.blender (IIRC, that's what it does right now).
>>
>> Ah,
>>
>> I hate to disagree but I think this is just the opposite of how it
>> should work.  I think it does complicate things but maybe a solution is
>> to have ENV overrides that way I could have:
>> using .blender
>>
>> /soft/blender2.5/.blender (or whatever were naming it...)
>> /soft/blender3.0/.blender
>> ~/.blender
>> ~/.blender3.0
>>
>> then I could configure my env so if I'm using blender3.0
>> BLENDERDIR = ~/.blender3.0  instead of the default, ~/.blender
>>
>> Kent
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>>
>>
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-- 
- Campbell