Bert Freudenberg <bert at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> wrote:> 
> > One complexity is that it can be hard to *find* the executable, on
> > Unix.  In one crazy case, maybe someone saved the executable, executed
> > it, and then deleted it from the filesystem!
> 
> In all normal circumstances it would be just argv[0] up to the last slash,
> right? But that's why I asked. 

Well, a lot of times argv[0] doesn't include the path.  And besides,
nobody says argv[0] has to tell the truth, anyway.

But we can avoid all this.  Surely Netscape tells plugins where they are
installed?!  That's even *better* than the specifics of where the VM is.



> Also, if we include this in the list of
> paths to search for, we'd have to define the order. Currently, it's 
> 
>   (1) CWD
>   (2) standard locations / LD_LIBRARY_PATH
>   (3) SQ_LIBDIR (/usr/local/lib/squeak/2.8)
> 


Well, I have a lot of cleanups to suggest for this list.  But the plugin should probably ignore it entirely.  Once we figure out where the plugin has been installed, we should look in that location exclusively.


Anyway, FWIW, I think we should clean the above up like this:

	1. LD_LIBRARY_PATH should be dumped in favor of, eg,
SQUEAK_PLUGINS_PATH.  Plugins are not system libraries!

	2. SQ_LIBDIR should just be a default if SQUEAK_PLUGINS_PATH is not
specified.  If someone explicitly sets SQUEAK_PLUGINS_PATH, we should honor it.

	3. CWD shouldn't be used unless the image specifically requests an
image with "./" at the beginning, or unless SQUEAK_PLUGINS_PATH has not
been specified.  Note that you can always explicitly add "." to
SQUEAK_PLUGINS_PATH if you want, so this is really *adding* functionality.



-Lex