Hi John, It was because of a number of posts in the forum, not sure whether DEV or USER around the time I reworked the pages which suggested $HOME/.local for single user local installations of GnuCash . I think it may also have been specified the previous Wiki page I started from as well. At the time I could not find any better suggestions so I left it in place. My own preference has been to install in /usr/local or /opt system wide for production. If you use make uninstall from the build directory it seems to uninstall correctly from $HOME/.local as long as the manifest still exists as the paths to each file installed are specified
If I do a local temporary install, I personally install in a subdirectory of my home directory and add the relevant search paths to the front of the PATH environment variable . You of course have the problem with the order in PATH as to whether you search $HOME directories before or after system installed paths if you have multiple copies of different versions. Ideally in that case you could invoke a startup script which setup the PATH variable depending on which version you are starting up and where its resouces are located. I have used /opt and /usr/local for different versions but the same problem with ordering the search order in PATH arises. Python installs what it calls site-packages under $HOME/.local which seem to be user specific but most of the other data I find in the directory is in $HOME/.local/share which seems to be mainly user specific data for various packages. The Linux File Heirarchy gives no real guidance for the structure of a users home directory apart from a reference to XDG and GLib conventions ( can't find any reference): https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html One stackexchange article suggested duplicating sections of the FHS under $HOME which seems a bit extreme. If I did that I would be inclined to have a specific directory under $HOME with the /bin, /etc, /lib /share directories under it. I have an Applications directory for that purpose usually with a package sub directory under that which contains the above directories. For the little development work on GnuCash I do I have a separate structure again under my home directory which has an install subdirectory which I install to. I have often wondered whether I am actually getting to the correct libraries by setting up the PATH variable (particularly if I forget to set it up). Then there is unsetting PATH when you want to go back to production work. Perhaps it is worth investigating the update-alternatives command used when several python versions are installed, e.g. https://askubuntu.com/questions/315646/update-java-alternatives-vs-update-alternatives-config-java. perhaps using this in startup scripts. Here the installed files are labelled with the version number and selected by setting a master and slave symbolic link groups which are setup with the "update-alternatives --set name path" command. Not sure what is the best location and structure for general users for a local installation though. I would be inclined to go for a directory labelled with a package name and version number with its own /bin, /etc, /lib and /share directories and then prepend these to the PATH. David Cousens ----- David Cousens -- Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-Dev-f1435356.html _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
