Correct. But he doesn't need that variable because mac-swiftmac is
already under the emacspeak/servers directory;-)
Also lessons learnt in the school of hard knocks: (see list archive
for examples)
The more "helpful" you make a system, the less people will read what
you write, and worse, they'll pay you back by using (abusing?) the
time you saved them by bad-mouthing your work on random chat rooms and
mailing lists about how difficult your software was to use :-)
Here is an example from swiftmac waiting to bite:
1. The readme.md helpfully shows you how to set it up.
2. The swiftmac server helps the user tune things to their taste with
a bunch of env vars.
3. The readme shows how to set these from inside Emacs with a few lisp forms
4. Clueless Luser: Will go complain in a few months about how they had to
"write lisp code" to set this up.
"Tim Cross" (via emacspeak Mailing List) writes:
>
> Raman, you just beat me to it! I agree 100%
>
> I was reading the thread where John and Robert were trying to get John's
> version of the swift server working and the main thing which jumped out
> at me was the core issue seemed to be Robert's attempt to be overly
> helpful and as a consequence has got into a situation where installation
> has become too complicated and error prone.
>
> Robert, I highly recommend that instead of trying to automate and
> simplify the installation of the switftmac server, just write up some
> very simple installation instructions. If you really want to automate
> part of the process, your instructions could just stipulate that the
> user should define the environment variable EMACSPEAK_DIR which points
> to the root of the emacspeak installation and then have your scripts use
> that variable to determine what to do or where to place stuff. Your
> script could even exit with an error message if the environment variable
> does not exist.
>
> Tim
>
>
>
>
> "\"T.V Raman\"" (via emacspeak Mailing List) <emacspeak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > I recommend you do nothing -- focus on getting the swiftmac server to
> > be really high-quality.
> >
> > 1. Right now it's in the emacspeak git repo, which is where
> > bleeding-edge users live
> > 2. So they dont need hand-holding; if they do, then they dont belong
> > on the bleeding edge.
> > 3. All your make script should do is to install a symlink to the
> > binary it builds in the servers directory of your checkout
> > 4. The .servers file is checked in, so adding swiftmac to it is a
> > one-time operation.
> >
> > Summary:
> >
> > 1. When given the choice between clever and simple, always pick simple.
> >
> > 2. Lazy programmer is a good programmer (Larry Wal, author of Perl).
> >
> > 3. Emacspeak in 28+ years has had a server added to it roughly once
> > every 5 years; the effort to add a server should reflect that.
> >
> > 4. I think you would benefit from reading TAOUP by Eric Raymond
> >
> > Robert Melton writes:
> > > TV--
> > >
> > > My lisp uses that exact variable, the purpose of the bash script is just to find which
> > > emacs to run and call my lisp code.
> > >
> > > The purpose of this is for people using the cutting edge version of swiftmac, they can
> > > use "make install" to place it in the emacspeak directory. This does not impact the
> > > contributed code in anyway, as it doesn't need to find the emacspeak directory, and
> > > does not contain this pair of finding scripts.
> > >
> > > So, if I should not use a shell script to run emacs or emacspeak to find where to
> > > install the swiftmac files to, how do you recommend I do it? User input?
> > >
> > > > On Jan 9, 2024, at 13:01, T.V Raman <raman@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > I would advice against doing this. Emacspeak is designed to work from
> > > > under a single directory -- rather than splattering its files around the
> > > > filesystem. See how variable emacspeak-directory is defined --
> > > > everything anchors on it. Any shell script you create will be fragile
> > > > because it gets more and more complex in the face of "handle different
> > > > use cases". This is also why emacspeak abandoned the make install rule,
> > > > leaving it to distros to do what they found most suitable;
> > > > --
>
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