RE: [Squeak-VMdev] RFC: Default VM directory

[Andreas R. <And...@gm...>]

Ian,

Good points all. So how about having a way for *asking* what the VM
thinks the CWD is?!

Cheers,
  - Andreas

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Piumarta [mailto:ian...@in...] 
> Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 11:26 PM
> To: Andreas Raab
> Cc: squ...@li...
> Subject: Re: [Squeak-VMdev] RFC: Default VM directory
> 
> 
> On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Andreas Raab wrote:
> 
> > So I changed this to be the image location by default. How is this
> > handled on the other platforms?!
> 
> Unix has a very well-developed idea about what cwd means.  
> Squeak behaves
> the way you'd expect any Unix app to behave: it inherits the 
> cwd from the
> shell (or whatever process runs Squeak).  The only thing it 
> requires is
> that the .sources (or a link thereto) be in the cwd.
> 
> Normally the cwd is the same dir as the image file, but there 
> is nothing
> at all preventing people from doing this:
> 
> 	ln -s some/where/SqueakV3.sources .
> 	/some/where/else/squeak /some/where/different/squeak.image
> 
> > Can we agree on the "definite default
> > working directory" for the VM to be set to the image location?!
> 
> For Unix I'd be inclined to generalize the above (i.e., the current
> behaviour) rather than making it more specific (e.g., setting 
> the cwd to
> something that isn't the inherited value); for example, removing the
> remaining restriction that the .sources be in the cwd, viz:
> 
> 	/some/where/else/squeak \
> 	  -sources /some/where/bizarre/SqueakV3.sources \
> 	  /some/where/different/squeak.image
> 
> such that the cwd can be made completely independent of the 
> three files
> the VM looks for.
> 
> Regarding where the log files get written to, the cwd at the time of
> starting the VM is the right place.  There is no reason to insist that
> any of the VM, .sources, .image/.changes be in a writable
> directory.  OTOH, the logs can only be written to a writable directory
> (duh ;-).
> 
> For now I don't think I should change anything.  It doesn't 
> seem to be an
> issue for anyone on Unix (not one single person has ever asked if the
> current behaviour might be changed).  If it ain't broke, I 
> ain't going to
> even begin to speculate about the merest possibility of 
> "fixing" it.  ;)
> 
> Your solution for windows (of setting cwd to the image 
> directory) seems
> fair enough given that the .changes file will normally be in 
> some place
> writable.  For Unix, such draconianism just isn't indicated (or even
> desirable).
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Ian
>