[GNC-dev] Single User Installation location on Linux

[David Cousens]

Hi Frank,

I agree with the general point of using a directory under $HOME as the
installation point. What it is called is really up to the users preference.
$HOME/.local/bin seems to be included in PATH by default on Linux Mint.  Not
sure if that is necessarily the case for other Linux distributions. I have
adopted using a simlink from $HOME/.local/bin to the executable in
$HOME/<folder-name>/bin/gnucash if I have a local installation.

That has the advantage that the PATH variable doesn't become cluttered with
a lot of individual paths to other installed applications. Not all other
aprograms necessarily install cleanly in the $HOME/<folder-name>{\bin | \etc
| \lib | /include | \share} structure. I have some which have the structure
$HOME/<folder-name>/<application-name>/{\bin | \etc | \lib | /include |
\share} which in time will hopefully become more consistent.

I personally only have a few apps I install for a single user, usually just
apps I am trying out. Most including GnuCash are installed system wide in
either /usr/local or /opt but we probably need to consider those users who
are either not comfortable with system installation or do not have the
privileges for system wide installation or easy access to those who do. 

I do also  install builds of maint and master branches locally but I use a
separate directory again under my home directory for any development
installations. 

Possibly the best way to go in the wiki is to specify a general form like 
<directory_name> in the syntax and point out that the user can subsitute
their choice for <directory_name>.

I am experimenting with a bash script to do the full install including
download of a selected version from a list of the current available versions
from SourceForge, extracting it and either a system wide to /usr/local or
/opt or a local install to a specified directory under $HOME. I would like
eventually to be able to query SourceForge for the list of available
versions but my bash skills are still too rudimentary.  The install part of
the script is easy it is just setting up the option selection which is
proving a challenge

David Cousens



-----
David Cousens
--
Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-Dev-f1435356.html