>>>>> Bernhard R Link <brl...@debian.org> writes:
>>>>> * Simon McVittie <s...@debian.org> [120926 18:50]:
[Cc: 688...@bugs.debian.org.]
>> ... but I don't think this is the right way to make it happen.
>> Please research previous discussion to check that you're not missing
>> arguments that have happened in the past, then if you still think
>> your proposal is the best option, take it upstream.
> This was already taken upstream
Could you please provide an URI of the prior discussion? TIA.
> and upstream's opinion was "if we do this as the unix guys expect
> then users complain that changing $HOME changes the home directory.".
The point is that the home directory is exactly “the directory
pointed to by the HOME environment variable.” At least on the
Unix-like systems.
It's just like the user's shell is the one pointed to by
${SHELL}, and the user's executables' search path is the
directories listed in ${PATH}. Never an “ordinary” program is
expected to use a system-wide configuration, or a hard-coded
value, for these.
[…]
> The documentation for g_get_home_dir [1] also documents what a proper
> program can do, it's a simple:
> const char *homedir = g_getenv ("HOME");
> if (!homedir)
> homedir = g_get_home_dir ();
> instead of using get_get_home_dir directly.
Actually, as pointed out in [2], a conforming application should
use g_get_user_cache_dir (), g_get_user_data_dir (), and
g_get_user_config_dir () instead.
Alas, the GLib implementation of these functions relies on
g_get_home_dir (), and thus itself fails to conform to the
specification [3], which explicitly requires that the HOME
variable's value is used. (FWIW, it doesn't even mention
getpwuid () or passwd(5).)
[2] news:506480fe.4060...@gnome.org
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.gtk+.devel.general/22728
[3] http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-0.8.html
> (And tip of the day: If you are working with multiple home
> directories regulariy and get tired of badly written programs
> confusing the initial home directory with the current one, setting
> the initial home directory to the empty string can help in many cases
> (though you lose having a default one for programs not getting one
> set)).
The question is, where Bash will get its ~/.bash_profile from,
then?
A “proper” hack (for a certain definition thereof) would be to
use an LD_PRELOAD module, redefining either g_get_home_dir (),
or, perhaps, getpwuid () (to catch the cases getpwuid () ends up
being used for no good reason at all.).
> [1] For example
> http://developer.gnome.org/glib/2.33/glib-Miscellaneous-Utility-Functions.html#g-get-home-dir
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