[REBOL] Problems with rebol startup Re:
From: brian:hawley:bigfoot at: 20-Sep-2000 4:36
[tim--johnsons-web--com] wrote:
>Hi:
> It appears that user.r is not evaluated by rebol unless rebol
>is started from the home directory.
>
>To clarify :
>
>OS is Windows NT
Say no more.
When REBOL starts up, it runs %rebol.r and then %user.r if it
finds them. It looks for these files in these directories, in
this order:
(REBOL/View checks these first)
- The directory referenced by REBOL_VIEW the environment variable
if it exists.
- The directory referenced by the registry entry /View installs.
(All REBOLs)
- The directory referenced by REBOL_HOME the environment variable
if it exists. This is supposed to be where REBOL is installed.
- The directory referenced by the HOME environment variable if
it exists. This is supposed to be the user home directory.
- The current directory (or startup directory of the shortcut).
On Windows platforms this lookup process has three problems:
- Minor: The user home directory is referred to by the USERPROFILE
variable on WinNT. The APPDATA variable refers to where you put
user data for applications on Win2K, although the USERPROFILE
variable is there too. Lastly, the Win9x/Me distributions don't
use environment variables at all. Programs can get the AppData
location from the registry if IE 4.0 or above is installed, but
stock Win95 installations don't even have this as a concept.
Don't you love consistency?
- Somewhat bad: REBOL doesn't expand any existing environment vars
in the definition of the REBOL_HOME and REBOL_VIEW variables on
WinNT/2K, even though every other program does. This means that
you have to explicitly specify the full paths rather than the
paths relative to the appropriate system variable. This seems to
be a "feature" to let you specify directories in REBOL syntax.
- Major: This lookup process is only performed once, rather than
once for %rebol.r and again for %user.r. This means that you
have to store your global settings (%rebol.r) in the same place
you store your user-specific settings (%user.r). This completely
defeats the purpose of having two settings files. This is a bug.
The first problem can be worked around on WinNT/2K and ignored on
Win9x/Me where multiuser settings are more a problem than a benefit.
The second and third problems have been sent to Feedback by me as a
bug report. It would help if others would do so as well.
Here's how I set up my Windows REBOL installations. This works.
Directories:
C:\Lang\REBOL (can be C:\Program Files\REBOL)
\Command
\Core
\View
Environment Variables, single-user:
REBOL_HOME=C:\Lang\REBOL (or C:\Program Files\REBOL)
REBOL_VIEW=C:\Lang\REBOL\View (or C:\Program Files\REBOL\View)
Environment Variables, multi-user (replace Username with real ID):
(On WinNT, in the System control panel)
APPDATA=%USERPROFILE%\Application Data
REBOL_HOME=C:\WINNT\Profiles\Username\Application Data\REBOL
REBOL_VIEW=C:\WINNT\Profiles\Username\Application Data\REBOL\View
(On Win2K, in the System control panel)
REBOL_HOME=C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\REBOL
REBOL_VIEW=C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\REBOL\View
Files: I put %rebol.r and %user.r in the REBOL_HOME directory,
and again in the REBOL_VIEW directory in case I want them to
be different. I reference all global library scripts with full
paths and user library scripts with relative paths. If I want
to reference scripts in REBOL_HOME from both that and View I
write the filenames as %////script.r with the appropriate number
of / for the depth of REBOL_HOME in the directory tree.
Since I tend to load these scripts with %require.r, which indexes
scripts by fully qualified paths, I had to fix clean-path so that
it would properly expand %// REBOL relative paths. REBOL briefly
had my fixed clean-path, but went back to the old one - I think
it got lost in the shuffle. It works, though. Look for it on my
web site, such as it is.
Yes, this is all rather awkward.
Brian Hawley
http://www.bigfoot.com/~brian.hawley/rebol/
