Re: [Groff] new groff directory structure

[Ted Harding]

On 28-Oct-00 Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> Indeed.  I'm thinking about this -- the solution is quite easy; just
> name the binaries, say, `groff-1.16.1' and add a hard link to
> `groff'.  Emacs even goes a step further: It installs binaries which
> are called by Emacs only into something like
> 
>   /usr/local/libexec/emacs/20.6/i686-pc-linux-gnu
> 
> Since many people use the groff programs in a pipe, this option (as
> nice it is) can't be used.

Not to mention all the people who don't use emacs ...

> Maybe groff (the program) shall check how it is called.  If arg[0] is,
> say, groff-1.16.1, it takes the `-1.16.1' postfix and appends it to
> all programs it is calling, i.e., pic-1.16.1, grotty-1.16.1, etc.
> 
> Has somebody a more elegant solution to this problem?

There are good arguments for having a version-dependent directory tree.

I do NOT like the idea of groff checking how it is called. For one thing,
it complicates groff for unnecessary reasons. Another is that one may
wish to call different components of the groff package (eqn, tbl, pic,
refer, troff, ... ) individually (as I often do). This suggested solution
would have to be applied to each component, if they were respectively
version-dependent also.

Probably the smoothest way to arrange things is to have subtrees with
version-dependent names (both in /usr/bin and /usr/...../groff etc),
together with a rich set of symbolic links in the usual places.
However, this restructuring is prety radical too ...

Ted.

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Date: 29-Oct-00                                       Time: 14:48:10
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