Re: [gentoo-dev] nsbrowser plugins

[Maciej Mrozowski]

On Wednesday 11 of August 2010 05:50:47 Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote:
> On 8/10/10 4:28 PM, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> >> Gentoo uses /usr/$(get_libdir)/nsbrowser/plugins for browser plugins.
> >> However, Debian uses /usr/$(get_libdir)/mozilla/plugins, and that's
> >> what many software projects (including Chromium) target.
> >
> > Could you name them? Opera looks into tons of directories.
>
> Sorry, I used a weasel word "many software projects" without naming
> them. I don't know packages other than www-client/chromium that would
> have problems with this.
>
> > You would then need to re-emerge all users of this eclass.
>
> I see. This puts some burden for our users with no obvious gains.
>
> > What's bugging Chromium? Why does it insist on using a competing
> > browser vendor's name instead of the much more neutral "nsbrowser",
> > which generally denotes browsers with a Netscape style plugin interface?
>
> Well, the fact that every distributions chooses its own directory for
> NPAPI plugins is sort of sad. The number of directories that have to be
> searched for plugins is ridiculously long.
>
> I was talking with Evan Martin, a Chromium developer, and he asked
> whether Gentoo could switch to "mozilla/plugins", so I started this
> thread. After the results, my patch to add "nsbrowser/plugins" to the
> plugins search path is probably going to be accepted.
>
> By the way, I just wonder... why not _symlink_ "mozilla/plugins" to
> "nsbrowser/plugins"? That would solve the technical problem, while
> keeping a good, more general name.

How about asking Evan Martin (and other browser developers) to add means to 
specify netscape plugin paths for plugin lookup, either as UI element or at 
compilation time. The former is exactly what konqueror provides for instance 
on so it can scan for plugins in many locations (including ~/ for some 
private/local plugins). Hardcoding paths is a bad design™.

-- 
regards
MM