[PATCH] Separate Emacs miscellaneous files directory from Emacs code directory.

[Tomi Ollila]

On Tue 25 Oct 2011 10:12, Thomas Jost <schnouki at schnouki.net> writes:

> On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:13:11 -0300, David Bremner <david at tethera.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:34:58 +0200, Amadeusz Żołnowski <aidecoe at aidecoe.name> wrote:
>> > --emacsetcdir was added, but it's set default to the same value as
>> > --emacslispdir for backward compatibility.
>> > ---
>> 
>> At a quick search, I couldn't find any reference to --emacsetcdir
>> outside Gentoo. I'd like to hear what other people think about this one.
>
> I had never heard of that, but apparently there's a
> /usr/share/emacs/24.0.90/etc on my system which contains images, READMEs
> and other misc files. It's also described in the "data-directory"
> variable in Emacs:
>
>     data-directory is a variable defined in `C source code'.
>     Its value is "/usr/share/emacs/24.0.90/etc/"
>
>     Documentation:
>     Directory of machine-independent files that come with GNU Emacs.
>     These are files intended for Emacs to use while it runs.
>
> So I guess it can't hurt to add this.

except...

emacslispdir is supposed to be PREFIX/share/emacs/site-lisp

In case emacsetcdir is not set to anything else this is to be
the same.

But what is the value for emacsetcdir used in Gentoo ?
------------------------------------------------------

The above "/usr/share/emacs/24.0.90/etc/" is analogous to 

PREFIX/share/emacs/<version>/etc; 

In PREFIX/share/emacs/<version> there is also (23.a in question):
drwxr-xr-x. 11 root root  4096 May 31 13:49 etc/
drwxr-xr-x.  4 root root  4096 May 31 13:49 leim/
drwxr-xr-x. 23 root root 12288 May 31 13:49 lisp/
drwxr-xr-x.  2 root root  4096 May 31 13:49 site-lisp/

(this site-lisp is different than the emacslispdir in question, so
the 'etc' here doesn't match emacsetcdir... but hey! maybe the answer
to the above question is: PREFIX/share/emacs/etc ? )

Anyway, I'm for inclusion of this patch, provided that there is good
explanation of it -- It doesn't seem to break things.

>
> However there is something annoying in the commit:
>
> +# The directory to which emacs lisp files should be installed
> +emacsetcdir=${EMACSETCDIR}
>
> $EMACSETCDIR is not for emacs lisp files (that's what $EMACSLISPDIR is
> for), so this line needs be fixed.

indeed.

>
> Regards
>
> -- 
> Thomas/Schnouki

Tomi