[Haskell-cafe] Yi on Windows

[Jeff Wheeler]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 6:14 PM, Peter Marks <peter at indigomail.net> wrote:

> The problem is down to getAppUserDataDirectory called in Yi.Boot. This
> function behaves differently on Windows to Linux... and more so on Windows
> 7. The first issue is that on Windows it doesn't prepend the "." to the
> directory name, so it is looking in "yi", not ".yi". On Windows 7, it looks
> for this directory in a completely different location:
> "C:\Users\peter\AppData\Roaming" rather than just "C:\Users\peter".

This sounds right.

> Obviously other parts of the program are using a different call to locate
> the config file as, letting the editor create the default file, it places it
> in "C:\Users\peter\.yi\yi.hs"! I can't find the code that does this at the
> moment - any pointers appreciated.

Are you sure that Yi ever writes a default config file? As far as I
know, when dyre provides no config from reading a file (or resuming a
saved state), Yi will boot with Yi.Config.Default.defaultConfig
(that's the one that lets you enter vim or emacs keybindings with 'v'
and 'e' respectively), but I don't think it ever writes this to a
file. (Note that src/Main.hs calls this; it might make sense to remove
that file and move this to Yi.Main or Yi.Boot.)

> My current feeling is that getAppUserDataDirectory is the correct call to
> use and the docs should be changed to tell users to put their file where
> this call points. Further, it would be nice if the editor told you where it
> was looking if it doesn't find a config file... well actually, when it does
> find a file too, so you know which one it loaded.

I'm in favor of printing it when an error occurs (should no config be
an error? not sure, but I'd be inclined to say no). When Yi boots
correctly, I'd prefer to not print anything.

Or, better yet, just always include it in --debug.

> Now I'm on to the next problem, it tries to write its error file in a
> location that doesn't exist: "C:\Users\peter\Local
> Settings\Cache\yi\errors.log". "Local Settings" doesn't exist on Windows 7.
> This is now "AppData\Local" I think. Setting the cacheDir field of the dyre
> Params should fix this, but I don't have time to try it right now.

If dyre defaults to using a directory that doesn't exist on 7, I'd say
that's a bug in dyre. We should probably tell Will Donnelly (the
maintainer) if that's correct.

Again, thanks so much for looking at this.

-- 
Jeff Wheeler

Undergraduate, Electrical Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign