I think this idea has merit.
If we are discussing large changes to the OS X paths, can I ask for
another? Let's move packages3d/ outside of modules/, so I can have
users who download kicad-extras drag and drop a modules directory full
of checked out github footprints into their ~/Documents/kicad/ (or
whatever...) directory, without having to include packages3d/ in both
the kicad and kicad-extras dmg.
Adam Wolf
Cofounder and Engineer
W&L
On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 12:56 AM, Collin Anderson
<metacollin@xxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:metacollin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi, I wanted to give some thoughts on the paths KiCad uses under
OS X, and some options to wrangle them all into something more
unified and easier to deal with in a non-breaking way.
I'll get right to it:
1. KiCad should never store, nor require, anything in /Library.
This is a root-owned, non-user writable directory, including
/Library/Application Support, and is only used if absolutely
necessary. It requires sudo or administrator privileges to create
and write to a kicad folder in /Library/Application Support.
/Library/Application Support is strictly for files that are to
remain invisible and are managed entirely automatically by a .app
bundle, and need to be shared between users on the system, but for
whatever reason cannot be stored in the .app bundle. The Apple
developer documentation makes it clear that /Library and
~/Llibrary must never contain files the user might need to
interact with directly, and these directories are intentionally
hidden and OS X actively discourages manual use of these
directories, to the point that they are completely invisible even
if the Finder is set to show invisible files. KiCad should still
look here, but the only reason to create anything in
/Library/Application Support is if an administrator wants everyone
to have certain custom assets, and manually install them here.
They cannot be modified after that, and should not be part of the
normal KiCad install/usage mode. But files the user will ever
interact with must not be kept in either /Library or ~/Library
Source:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/General/Conceptual/MOSXAppProgrammingGuide/AppRuntime/AppRuntime.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010543-CH2-SW9
(requires a free apple developer account sadly)
2. It's ok, and in fact, preferred, to store per-user copies of
updatable assets like a lot of what is in the kicad-library
folder. This correctly integrates with features like Time
Machine, File Vault, and User Migration. This may seem like a
terrible waste of space, but wasting space is how OS X likes to do
things. A lot of design decisions have gone towards decoupling a
lot of things that could be shared by making copies (like all the
dylibs and frameworks in .app bundles, for example, making OS X
apps balloon to...well, Doc Brown would say 1.21 jiggabytes).
Looking in my own ~/Library/Application Support folder, there are
tons of things that could be shared but aren't. That, and if
anyone did want to make a change (which presumably is why they are
stored in ~/Library/Application Support to begin with, since if
the files don't need to be writeable, they are simply stored in
the .app bundle), they do not need administrator privileges.
Sure, I know the rational is that the assets will automagically be
updated using git, and that's great, and you want to avoid doing
this over and over on a multiuser system. BUT, what if something
bad happens, someone screws up and makes a bad commit that breaks
someones project? Or a crash our power outage dies and corrupts
assets, but there is no administrator around to clean up or do a
git --reset hard on /Library? If those assets are stored in the
user's library instead, that user can simply use Time Machine to
return to an earlier snapshot and in either scenario, they simply
continue working.
Beyond that, maybe they just didn't want to update anything, and
someone else does :). It's silly, but people do strange things.
3. BUT, the ~/Library folder is, just like /Library, never to be
used for files the user will need to manage or interact with. Only
files created automatically and managed automatically by
applications are meant to reside here. Given that the user may
wish to install or modify things in this folder, and at least for
now has to manually install things to it and can't do this form
within the KiCad app, there really should not be anything stored
in ~/Library either. If an app does not ask the user
specifically, the perferred location for files a user may need to
interact with is ~/Documents. This is why, for example, the
Arduino IDE stores its libraries, and allows custom cores and all
sorts of things to override its default settings (stored in the
.app) by simply managing the ~/Documents/Arduino folder. It's
acceptalbe, familiar, and OS X user friendly to store customizable
support files in their ~/Documents folder. It's the folder for
stuff the user can mess with, not just user-created stuff.
Anyway, I am not advocating the removal of any of the current
search paths, but rather adding ~/Documents/KiCad (let's use
proper case and make it look nice - KiCad vs kicad - while we're
at it :) ) and give this path the highest precedence - the user
should be able to override whatever might be installed elsewhere
with whatever they put in this folder. It would also be a nice
place to store documentation if it is auto updated in the future.
I have actually already made these changes in my, uh, personal
version of KiCad, and would be happy to put them in a branch, but
I didn't want to just shove all this in a merge request, since its
a pretty big change to, well, policy on OS X. I am a newcommer,
and its totally possible I missed something and there are very
good reasons for how things are done now, and beyond that, maybe
no one else wants to do any of this, has a better idea, or doesn't
like this one. Which is fine. These are just suggestions coming
from a long time mac user, and if any of this is something the
other devs would like to look into, I'll put up the branch (it
also changes comments and documentation to reflect the path
changes - I did it a while ago then realized how big of a change I
was doing and sort of put it on the back burner).
If this is not something anyone is interested in, I completely
understand and I will not mention or press for it again. Please
don't think I am trying to to tell anyone here what to do - I
defer to the judgement of all the people who actually wrote those
500,000+ lines of code, of course :). Sorry about the length
again. I am very bad at being concise :(.
--
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." - Isaac Asimov
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