[sword-devel] finding conf file for module

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

On 23 May 2010 01:06, Matthew Talbert <ransom1982 at gmail.com> wrote:
> So, my first question is, "what is the best way to get the conf file
> for a given module?" and the second is, "could we please add this to
> the engine?"
>

The best way is probably to store sword configurations according to
XDG base-dir spec.[1]
It allows to store system-wide and per-user config files, user-data
(actual modules) & cache (search index).
If you look into your ~/.config ~/.local  &  ~/.cache you will notice
that a lot of programs already use it =)

On Windows gtk maps these locations to Application Data / All Users
for system & per user Application Data (or something like that, sorry
I don't use Windows)

In terms of API gtk, at least on *nix like systems, parses environment
XDG_* variables & has some defaults. The return from those functions
is semicolon separated list of paths which you then interate over to
get all the information you need.

Ofcourse if we go this route some decisions will have to be made as to
how to split it.

1) Everything is user data so we move ~/.sword -> ~/.local/sword and
coordinate with all apps to use XDG API's in their language/toolkit to
find system & user modules / configuration files

2) Split config, actual modules & search index into ~/.config/sword/,
~/.local/sword/ & ~/.cache/sword and do changes in sword where it
finds all the pieces. The idea here is that you can wipe ~/.cache and
everything will still work and cache can be regenerated, ~/.local
should store user created data (e.g. personal commentary and
downloaded modules) while ~/.config should store preferences only
(which can be wiped out to go back to default options). Read the spec
for more details.

I'm pretty sure there are ready made api's / libraries to deal with
this. Some duplication might be necessary in sword =)

e.g. I have this in my GtkBuilder branch already for xiphos for find
system data files:

1458        gchar** dir_collection;
1459        guint dir_collection_length;
1460        guint dir_i;
1461        gchar * full_fname;
1462
1463        dir_collection = g_strdupv ((gchar **) g_get_system_data_dirs ());
1464        dir_collection_length = g_strv_length (dir_collection);
1465
1466        for (dir_i = 0; dir_i < dir_collection_length; dir_i++) {
1467                full_fname = g_build_filename
(dir_collection[dir_i], PACKAGE, fname, NULL);
1468                if (g_file_test (full_fname, G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS)) {
1469                        return full_fname;
1470                }
1471
1472        }


[1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html