[PD-dev] loading classes: search by directory rather than extension

[Roman Haefeli]

On Mon, 2015-09-28 at 09:09 +0800, Chris McCormick wrote:
> On 26/09/15 20:25, Miller Puckette wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 06:44:54PM +0800, Chris McCormick wrote:
> >> To my mind ~/pd/extra is not that different to ~/pd-externals in that it
> >> still forces the user to have a non-hidden folder in their home directory.
> >> Whenever applications do this I find it mildly annoying.
> >
> > I thing for "settings" a hidden file is appropriate (e.g., ".pdsettings") but
> > for libraries you want them visible - but precisely where would depend how you
> > organize your files so should be settable.
> 
> Good point, and Linux doesn't have anything like OSX's ~/Library folder.
> 
> > My reason for suggesting putting them in "pd/extra" is that you already put
> > "pd" somewhere (and presumably chose where to put it) and
> > if you relocate pd later the extra files will follow.  Also, you can then
> > have different versions of Pd with different libraries loaded.
> 
> Oh I see - you mean as a default just to use the "extra" folder relative 
> to wherever the Pd binary is.
> 
>  From the perspective of the deken plugin, as long as it can ask Pd 
> where the files are supposed to be stored and the location is write-able 
> by the current user then it can work. I agree with IOhanne's points 
> though, and I'd prefer ~/.pd/extra over ~/pd-externals and over nothing 
> at all.

I second that. Reasons why I prefer the 'pd' dir (or whatever name it
finally will be) to be hidden:

* It is easy to make a visible symlink to a hidden folder. There is no
similarly easy way I can think of to hide a visible folder.

* It's pretty standard on Linux and I'd like Pd to adhere to some
standards. There is the freedesktop.org way of a file hierarchy with
~/.config and ~/.local, while putting stuff into ~/.programname is
common, too. I cannot think of many programs that force you to have a
visible folder in your home directory. 

* Pd already uses the OS specific standards on OS X and Windows, but not
so much on Linux. '~/pd-externals' is just strange, but ~/pd/extra is
not less strange. What justifies to put (non-admin) user installed
libraries into an extra folder on Linux, when at the same time it's
<some-prefix>/pd on Windows and OS X? Treating Linux specially adds
complexity I can't really see the reasoning behind.

Roman 

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