Is panel plugins integration broken at the moment?

[Fabian Nowak]

Am Samstag, den 29.10.2005, 04:01 -0700 schrieb Brian J. Tarricone:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> Fabian Nowak wrote:
> > 
> > regarding the following points:
> > 
> > - generally, noone has ...libexec in his ld.s.conf or LD_LIBRARY_PATH,
> 
> True, but it's not necessary to have libexec in ld.so.conf or
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH.  Those two things are to tell programs where to find
> *libraries*.  The new panel doesn't store libraries in libexec.  It
> stores programs.
> 
> > - no other desktop systems use libexec,
> 
> Totally incorrect:
> 
> $ ls /usr/libexec/g*
> /usr/libexec/gconf-sanity-check-2*   /usr/libexec/gnome-keyring-ask*
> /usr/libexec/gconfd-2*               /usr/libexec/gnome-pdf-viewer*
> /usr/libexec/gdict-applet*           /usr/libexec/gnome-pty-helper*
> /usr/libexec/gdmaskpass*             /usr/libexec/gnome-vfs-daemon*
> /usr/libexec/gdmopen*                /usr/libexec/gnome_segv2*
> /usr/libexec/gdmtranslate*           /usr/libexec/gthumb-catalog-view*
> /usr/libexec/ggv-postscript-viewer*  /usr/libexec/gthumb-image-viewer*
> 
> Looks like gnome uses it for quite a few things, and I don't have the
> entirety of gnome installed.

well, most of my software is prepackaged as is in most distributions
which are widely spread. i do neither have /usr/libexec nor any other
programs in /usr/local/libexec despite from the ones in the subdirectory
xfce4.

> 
> > - adding $prefix/lib to ld.so.conf is already necessary for even the old
> >   panel,
> 
> Well, if you install it to a non-system location, of course it is.  What
> else would you expect?

from a user's point of view, i expect it to install to where my
environment varaibles do already point or at least to ask me if i would
like to have changed that. don't forget, xfce is not only run by power
users.

> 
> > - installation instructions on xfce-goodies wiki site already contain 
> >   the third point and would be blown having another sentebnce saying "if
> >   you run panel 4.4, which can be found out by typing [...] add 
> >   libexec",
> 
> Irrelevant and unnecessary.  See my first point.
> 
> > - some documentations say libexec was deprecated,
> 
> Please provide the URL of an authoritative source that states this.
> Even then, this isn't really relevant.  If a distro packager (or user)
> wants to, they can simply provide --libexecdir= to configure.

i had expected that you were able to remember this thread and to
investigate the links yourself, but here they are:
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html
http://www.humbug.org.au/talks/fhs/usr.html

"> Should we change some of these to /usr/libexec?

I don't think so. Both FHS 2.1 (referenced by the current Policy) and
FHS 2.3 (the latest FHS version) mandate /usr/lib (or a subdirectory)
for internal binaries." @
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/05/msg00405.html

> 
> > i suggest switching to $prefix/lib for the panel plugins location for
> > ease of use which is one of Xfce's main principles. this would also
> > decrease the amount of "the plugin ... is not shown" mails on the
> > mailing lists.
> > i know that all ported plugins would need to be changed in their
> > configuration files for another configuration path and don't mind doing
> > that for my plugins and would also do that for other plugins where
> > necessary.
> 
> Sorry, but quite frankly you've misinterpreted the problem and don't
> have a clue as to what you're talking about.

ahem, i've not tried to interprete the problem, but to re-talk/-open it
and have you or jasper find a solution.

> 
> At any rate, I just looked at 'libtool --mode=link --help', and I think
> the solution here is to add "-R$(libdir)" to LDFLAGS in our Makefile.am.
>  I'm not 100% sure if this needs to be done for the external plugins
> themselves, or for libxfce4panel, or both.  That should hardcode a
> libdir in the executable itself, so it'll search in the right place
> regardless of ld.so.conf or LD_LIBRARY_PATH (but should still fall back
> on these if it can't find the library).

actually, this answer was what i hoped for - try to investigate how to
circumvent this problem.

fabian