Re: Making demo programs more evident...

[Daniel J S. <dan...@ie...>]

Ethan Merritt wrote:

>On Friday 07 May 2004 11:57 am, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>
>Dan, 
>
>I assume you are talking about unix-like systems.
>

Yes.

>> But someone who hasn't installed the program, but rather just logs into
>>an account and types "gnuplot" will not know where to go for the demos.
>>    
>>
>
>Surely that is an issue of proper installation.  If the system is properly
>configured, then default the when a user logs in the environmental
>variable GNUPLOT_LIB is set to the demo dir and everything should
>work transparently.    Now admittedly we leave this up to the packagers
>of specific gnuplot variants rather than making it part of gnuplot's own
>"make install" command.  The linux rpms I have seen put the demos
>in /usr/share/doc/gnuplot-VERSION/demo/ so I would expect that 
>when a new user logs in that is what he gets as GNUPLOT_LIB.
>

Oh yes, I see that is where they are.  I've a 3.7 version still hanging 
around.  In any case, GNUPLOT_LIB environment variable is the proper way.

>> Neither will he or she be able to run the complete set of demos if, in
>>fact, they are found... unless they are smart enough to copy the demos
>>to their own account.
>>    
>>
>
>This just isn't true.  Yes, someone with write privilege has to run "make"
>in the demo directory in order to generate some of the data files,
>but that should already have happened at install time.
>

I simply meant that one or two of the demos require gnuplot be launched 
from a directory for which there is write privilege.

>>If a person without su privilege goes to the 
>>directory where the demos are and loads them, at least one demo requires
>>the creation of a file, which will bomb because the user doesn't have
>>privilege to create a file in that directory.
>>    
>>
>
>"Don't do that".   Set your current directory to something normal,
>and set GNUPLOT_LIB to be the directory where the demos are.
>

Right, that is the proper way.  I should have read the INSTALL file all 
the way through.

Thanks,

Dan