Where goes stacks, included stacks and externals? (was Dialogs inlibrary organization)

[Dar Scott]

On Thursday, February 5, 2004, at 01:14 PM, Rob Cozens wrote:

> In my designs, a standalone generally starts using all libraries it 
> needs on startUp or preOpenStack, so the time taken to determine the 
> actual location of the libraries is factored into the "application 
> startup delay."

OK.  So in the Chipp & Dar stack example, if Chipp's stack was to be 
friendly to this method, it should check whether Dar's stack is already 
in the libraries before attempting to start using it.

It seems that for you it would be OK if the notes for Chipp's stack 
says you need to make sure Dar's stack is in the libraries before 
using, that it does not start-using it.  Would that be OK for most 
people?  Would most people expect Chipp's stack to find and start using 
Dar's?

>
>> if you got Chipp's Really Cool 3D Rendering stack that used Dar's 
>> Totally Adequate High Precision Decimal Math stack, how would you 
>> expect to use them?
>
> I would expect that Chipp's installer would place the components in 
> their proper locations and/or the installation instructions would 
> address this.
>
> OTOH, Serendipity Library is both translatable and open source; so if 
> Chipp's design forces placement of his stack &/or yours in a specific 
> folder one could modify the translation of the "PlugIn" or "Data" 
> folder names in the messages file; or, if Chipp's design required 
> more, change the logic of the library search handler.

Suppose Chipp supplied Dar's stack with his.

Suppose Chipp's stack was delivered in the Chipp Rendering stack family 
folder and Dar's stack was delivered in the Dar Math stack family 
folder.  Those have the problem of having to be merged into any 
existing folders in the developer's stack folder.  Chipp's stack would 
then need to look for Dar's stack using a relative path like this: 
"../Dar Math/TA HP Decimal Math.rev".

However, if there were no stack families except as one might organize 
for himself, then these would be delivered as simply two stacks and 
Chipp's might simply look for Dar's in the same folder.  As much as I 
like a practice of assuming stack families, this has a nice simplicity 
to it.

All this is moot if it is a common practice to assume libraries are 
'start using' bottom up (library stacks don't start-using their 
required libraries) and the application designer is responsible for 
making sure that happens.  (The bottom-up requirement would not be 
needed if it is common practice to not use required libraries in 
libraryStack messages.)

Dar Scott