$HOME/.Nooooooo!

[Pierre Fernique]

Tony Linde wrote:
> I'll raise this again as a separate topic.
> 
> We're getting problems with (plastic) apps using .Xxxx directories to 
> store temporary files.
> 
> Doing a demo the other day on a (WinXP) machine configured by the 
> department (and so not changeable) we kept getting 'profile storage 
> space exceeded' messages from the OS. This because all the apps were 
> using $HOME/.xxx directories as scratch space: this area in Windows is 
> for user profile information not general storage. We need some way that 
> users can point to some other 'home' directory for AR/PLASTIC apps.
> 
> The main offender was Aladin because it stored a couple of VOTable files 
> in the $HOME/.aladin directory.
> 
> Can I ask that anyone writing an application which might be run under 
> windows *not* store anything in the $HOME/.xxx type of directory. 
> Temporary files should go in the Temp directory and application profiles 
> in a $HOME/Application Data/xxx directory.
> 
> I see that gaim, firefox, thunderbird etc all do this correctly - can 
> someone look up how they handle it and place the advice up here?
> 
> And apologies if any of this is duff information - feel free to correct 
> the above if I am wrong.
> 
> Cheers,
> Tony.
> 

Hi Toni, Hi all,

I am sorry that your Aladin demonstration failed due to a quota disk 
problem. The current way for working around this problem was to create a 
symbolic link to a .aladin directory in another location. But I 
understand that during a demonstration it is not super.

About the principle of using OS dedicated temporary location and 
application profile mechanism, it is unfortunately more difficult that 
you were explaining, and by experience that can become a real difficulty.

Consider the operating systems that Aladin is trying to support you will 
see that each of them has their own solution (Unix/Mac/Windows/...). And 
if you are looking only Windows systems, you can see that each major 
version has also is own mechanism, and not always unique (C:\TEMP, 
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP, C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\Local 
Settings\Temp....) And I am pretty sure that Vista is using another 
location. And it is the same things for application setting location 
(.INI, Windows registry,...).

For my part I chose the more generic solution that I know : the 
$home/.directory and simple ASCII configuration files.

Another reason of my choice: it is really easier to explain to the 
Aladin users that they have to look into their $HOME/.aladin directory 
instead of explaining each possible case.

Regards
Pierre