[Pkg-crosswire-devel] Debconf question to install modules and other ideas

[Daniel Glassey]

Not for this packaging release for Jaunty but putting it out there:

An idea that I've never implemented was to add a debconf question to
use installmgr to choose some modules to install when you install
sword. These would be installed by installmgr to
/usr/local/share/sword and then indexed by mkfastmod.

An advantage over packaged modules is getting the full list and not
having to maintain the modules.
An advantage of having packaged modules is that it makes making a
custom distro with modules on the CD easier.

And another couple of ideas (not for this packaging release either).
I'll pass it onto sword-devel but I'd like feedback here first.

Package installed modules go into /usr/share/sword (which I understand
to be the FHS[1] appropriate place for them - as read-only
architecture independent data files).

But there is a problem that they can't (and by FHS shouldn't) be
indexed there. The FHS suggests /var/cache : Application cache data or
/var/lib : Variable state information
So I 'm suggesting that the index files for all modules in
/usr/share/sword and /usr/local/share/sword should be indexed into
/var/cache/sword and the lib and frontends should be updated to find
them there.
Maybe a very niced cron job could update unindexed modules in the
background? But only if you answer a debconf question to say you want
that in case you are on a disk or cpu limited system.
Maybe have a 'sword' group that has the rights to that dir so
appropriate users can create indexes.

Another problem is that users have to use apt to remove the system
installed modules.
The other idea is for ~/.sword to be created with soft links to
modules in /usr/share/sword and /usr/local/share/sword. Then a user
can 'delete' the module from there without having to go near apt. The
library will need to ignore the system directories and only see the
home dir plus any other custom dirs.

Regards,
Daniel

[1] Filesystem Hierarchy Standard - http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html