Re: [PATCH 11/11] Allow ETC_GITCONFIG to be a relative path.

From: Steffen Prohaska <prohaska@zib.de>
Date: Nov 15, 2007, 20:10 UTC
Message-ID: <E652EC54-9F94-444F-AF94-2FA990355A78@zib.de>
In-Reply-To: <200711151931.29029.johannes.sixt@telecom.at>

On Nov 15, 2007, at 7:31 PM, Johannes Sixt wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> On Thursday 15 November 2007 07:53, Steffen Prohaska wrote:
>> Now I'm wondering if we could make path relocation a bit more
>> explicit.  How about doing something like.
>>
>> 	system_wide = relocate_path(ETC_GITCONFIG);
>>
>> and relocate_path(const char *) would expand a format
>> string in path.  At this point I see only a single %s
>> that would be expanded with the install prefix.  If
>> ETC_GITCONFIG is "%s/etc/gitconfig" relocate path will return
>> "C:/msysgit/bin/etc/gitconfig" for my above example.  It is
>> basically a printf with the install prefix path.
>
> I don't see the problem that you are trying to solve.

Path relocation would be more explicit:
1) Paths that need to be relocated are filtered through
    relocate_path().  That's easy to understand.
2) All the code prefixing the path is in relocate_path().
    This avoids code duplication.
3) Path that should be relocated contain "%s" in the Makefile.
    This indicates that some string expansion may take place.

(1) and (2) would be useful even if you do not agree with (3). The code in PATCH 9/11 and PATCH 11/11 looks very similar. If the prefixing code went into a separate function, we'd have less code. Also, relocate_path() could be useful at other places. For example, I'd use it to locate the HTML documentation relative to the installation directory.

	Steffen