[Gretl-devel] directory structure in CVS

[Allin Cottrell]

On Sun, 30 Dec 2007, Sven Schreiber wrote:

> For Windows (& Mac gui?) users your suggested cleanup [of what 
> was under the File Open/Save tab in Preferences] would be quite 
> helpful I think. And I agree that for Unix people who have 
> relied on using some specific startup directory as their working 
> directory there should be a solution as well. Maybe "Use startup 
> dir as working dir"? Should that checkbox maybe be greyed out or 
> completely missing on Windows or could it make sense there as 
> well?

I _think_ I'm now getting clearer on this.

I've added "/File/Working directory" with two permanent options 
plus a "recently visited" list.  The two options are (a) GUI 
selection of working directory (with a mouseover tooltip showing 
the current path) and (b) "Use startup directory" (again, with a
tooltip exposing what this is).  Selection from this menu directly 
changes the working directory.

I've also (c) got a checkbox under Preferences/General, "Set 
working directory from shell".  This does not change the working 
directory right away (and it notifies the user of this via a popup 
when the box is checked or unchecked).  Rather, its function is to 
establish or remove the _policy_ of automatically setting the 
working directory to the shell CWD on gretl startup.

It's perhaps unlikely that Windows or OS X users will have cause 
to use (b) or (c), but they might.  A Windows user might find it 
helpful to define gretl startup icons with specific starting 
directories in their "Properties".  As for OS X, the gretl startup 
script has to "cd" to the "bin" directory under Gretl.app before 
actually starting the gretl GUI, which potentially screws things 
up, but I'm now recording the user's real CWD prior to doing that 
and exporting it as an environment variable, which gretl then 
picks up.  So it should be possible to support the "use startup 
directory" option on OS X too (not tested yet).

Now for another thing: if we've finally got the working directory 
business right, it's time to revisit "shelldir" and the special 
meaning given to "./XXX" filenames in some contexts.  Recall that 
"shelldir" is the directory in which "! XXX" shell commands are 
run.  My proposal is

* Always default shelldir to workdir.  (This will equal the 
startup CWD if and only if that's what the user has asked for.)

* Don't try to do anything fancy with "./XXX" filenames (in store, 
outfile, eqnprint, tabprint): if the given path is not absolute, 
always write such files to workdir.

"@workdir" is now available as a built-in string.  Suppose a 
user-function calls "outfile" then wants to do some shell 
processing on the output.  That shouldn't be a problem.  If you 
know that "outfile foo --write" always creates "@workdir/foo" then 
you know how to access foo for reading.

"set shelldir" may still be useful for some purposes: we may want 
to shift the location for shell execution temporarily to, say, the 
tramo directory, as in some of Ignacio's functions.  So although I 
think we should default shelldir to workdir, I don't think we 
should collapse the two.

Allin.