This question says the best place to store settings in linux is in ~/.config/appname
The program I'm writing needs to use a 99MB .dat file for recognizing facial landmarks, embedding it in the binary doesn't seem like a good idea.
Is there some default place to store resources on linux? currently it's just in the directory next to the executable, but this requires that the program is run with the current directory being the directory it's located in.
What's the best way to deal with resources like this on linux? (that could potentially be cross platform with at least OSX)
You should take a look at the Filesystem Hierarchy Standards. Depending on the data (will it change, is it constant across all installations, etc) the path where it gets placed will change based on the standards.
In general:
/usr/lib/program: includes object files, libraries, and internal binaries for an application
/usr/share/program: for all read-only architecture independent data files
/var/lib/program: holds state information pertaining to an application or the system
Those seem like pretty good places to start, and you can check the documentation to see if your app falls into one of those categories.
If the file is specific to the user running the app, it should be in a subdir of ~/ but AFAIK there's no standard, and the best choice depends much on the file type/usage. If it should be visible to the user via GUI, you could use ~/Desktop or ~/Downloads. If it's temporary, you can use ~/tmp or ~/var/tmp.
If it's not specific, you should place it in a subdir of /var. Again, the exact subdir may depend on its kind and other factors.
Related
I've had trouble with this issue across many languages, most recently with C++.
The Issue Exemplified
Let's say we're working with C++ and have the following file structure for a project:
("Project" main folder with three [modules, data, etc] subfolders)
Now say:
Our maincode.cpp is in the Project folder
moduleA.cpp is in modules folder
data.txt is in data folder
moduleA.cpp wants to read data.txt
So the way I'd currently do it would be to assume maincode.cpp gets compiled & executed inside the Project folder, and so hardcode the path data/data.txt in moduleA.cpp to do the reading (say I used fstream fs("data/data.txt") to do so).
But what if the code was, for some reason, executed inside etc folder?
Is there a way around this?
The Questions
Is this a valid question? Or am I missing something with the wd (working directory) concept fundamentals?
Are there any methods for working around absolute paths so as to solve this issue in C++?
Are there any universal methods for doing the same with any language?
If there are no reasonable methods, how would you approach this issue?
Please leave a comment if I missed any important details with the problem's illustration!
At some point the program has to make an assumption where the file(s) are. Either by getting it from user input or a relative path with the presumed filename. As already said in the comments, C++ recently got std::filesystem added in C++17 which can help you making cross-platform code that interacts with the hosts' filesystem.
That being said, every program, big or small, has to make certain assumptions at some point, deleting or moving certain files is problematic for any program in case the program requires them to be at a certain location under a certain name. This is not solvable other than presenting the user with an error message etc.
As #Hatted Rooster said, it's not generally solvable for some arbitrary file without making some assumptions, however there are frameworks that allow you to "store" some files in the resources embedded into the executable (or otherwise). Those frameworks would usually allow your to handle such files in a opaque way, without the need to rely on a current working dir or relative paths.
For example, see the Qt Resource System.
Your program can deduce the path from argv[0] in the main call, if you know that it is always relative to your executable or you use an absolute path like "C:\myProgram\data\data.txt".
The second approach works in every language.
I am writing a program that produces a formatted file for the user, but it's not only producing the formatted file, it does more.
I want to distribute a single binary to the end user and when the user runs the program, it will generate the xml file for the user with appropriate data.
In order to achieve this, I want to give the file contents to a char array variable that is compiled in code. When the user runs the program, I will write out the char file to generate an xml file for the user.
char* buffers = "a xml format file contents, \
this represent many block text \
from a file,...";
I have two questions.
Q1. Do you have any other ideas for how to compile my file contents into binary, i.e, distribute as one binary file.
Q2. Is this even a good idea as I described above?
What you describe is by far the norm for C/C++. For large amounts of text data, or for arbitrary binary data (or indeed any data you can store in a file - e.g. zip file) you can write the data to a file, link it into your program directly.
An example may be found on sites like this one
I'll recommend using another file to contain data other than putting data into the binary, unless you have your own reasons. I don't know other portable ways to put strings into binary file, but your solution seems OK.
However, note that using \ at the end of line to form strings of multiple lines, the indentation should be taken care of, because they are concatenated from the begging of the next lineļ¼
char* buffers = "a xml format file contents, \
this represent many block text \
from a file,...";
Or you can use another form:
char *buffers =
"a xml format file contents,"
"this represent many block text"
"from a file,...";
Probably, my answer provides much redundant information for topic-starter, but here are what I'm aware of:
Embedding in source code: plain C/C++ solution it is a bad idea because each time you will want to change your content, you will need:
recompile
relink
It can be acceptable only your content changes very rarely or never of if build time is not an issue (if you app is small).
Embedding in binary: Few little more flexible solutions of embedding content in executables exists, but none of them cross-platform (you've not stated your target platform):
Windows: resource files. With most IDEs it is very simple
Linux: objcopy.
MacOS: Application Bundles. Even more simple than on Windows.
You will not need recompile C++ file(s), only re-link.
Application virtualization: there are special utilities that wraps all your application resources into single executable, that runs it similar to as on virtual machine.
I'm only aware of such utilities for Windows (ThinApp, BoxedApp), but there are probably such things for other OSes too, or even cross-platform ones.
Consider distributing your application in some form of installer: when starting installer it creates all resources and unpack executable. It is similar to generating whole stuff by main executable. This can be large and complex package or even simple self-extracting archive.
Of course choice, depends on what kind of application you are creating, who are your target auditory, how you will ship package to end-users etc. If it is a game and you targeting children its not the same as Unix console utility for C++ coders =)
It depends. If you are doing some small unix style utility with no perspective on internatialization, then it's probably fine. You don't want to bloat a distributive with a file no one would ever touch anyways.
But in general it is a bad practice, because eventually someone might want to modify this data and he or she would have to rebuild the whole thing just to fix a typo or anything.
The decision is really up to you.
If you just want to keep your distributive in one piece, you might also find this thread interesting: Store data in executable
Why don't you distribute your application with an additional configuration file? e.g. package your application executable and config file together.
If you do want to make it into a single file, try embed your config file into the executable one as resources.
I see it more of an OS than C/C++ issue. You can add the text to the resource part of your binary/program. In Windows programs HTML, graphics and even movie files are often compiled into resources that make part of the final binary.
That is handy for possible future translation into another language, plus you can modify resource part of the binary without recompiling the code.
awesomeApp is a cross platform (Mac, Win, Linux) Qt application in C++ that will store information about all files recursively under a given folder ~/content. Here are my options:
Store all information replicated hierarchically or in a db in ~/.awesomeApp under home directory.
Decentralizing info under ~/content. For example ~/content/foo/.awesomeApp stores information about all files ~/content/foo/*
The first approach will be good for a multi-user environment where each user wants to have his own "view". It will also work when the directory is read-only.
However, the second approach will be good when a user moves or renames a sub-directory.
Is there any other point worth considering or known best practices?
Is there a library that achieves either of these two approaches?
I've not done much coding for Windows lately, and I find myself sitting at Visual Studio right now, making a small program for Windows 7 in C++. I need some configuration data to be read/written.
In the old days, (being a Borland kind of guy) I'd just use a TIniFile and keep the .ini beside my exe Obviously this is just not the done thing any more. The MS docs tell me that Get/WritePrivateProfileString are for compatibility only, and I doubt that I'd get away with writing to Program Files these days. Gosh I feel old.
I'd like the resulting file to be easily editable - open in notepad sort of thing, and easily findable. This is a small app, I don't want to have to write a setup screen when I can just edit the config file.
So, what is the modern way of doing this?
Often people use XML files for storing preferences, but they are often overkill (and they aren't actually all that readable for humans).
If your needs would be easily satisfied with an INI file, you may want to use Boost.Program_options using the configuration file parser backend, which actually writes INI-like files without going through deprecated (and slow!) APIs, while exposing a nice C++ interface.
The key thing to get right is where to write such configuration file. The right place is usually a subdirectory (named e.g. as your application) of the user's application data directory; please, please, please, don't harcode its path in your executable, I've seen enough broken apps failing to understand that the user profile may not be in c:\Documents and settings\Username.
Instead, you can retrieve the application data path using the SHGetFolderPath function with CSIDL_APPDATA (or SHGetKnownFolderPath with FOLDERID_RoamingAppData if you don't mind to lose the compatibility with pre-Vista Windows versions, or even just expanding the %APPDATA% environment variable).
In this way, each user will be able to store its preferences and you won't get any security-related errors when writing your preferences.
This is my opinion (which I think most of the answers you get will be opinion), but it seems that the standard way of doing things these days is to store config files like these in C:\Users\<Username>. Moreover, it is generally good to not clutter this directory itself, but to use a subdirectory for the purpose of storing your application's data, such as C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\<YourApplicationName>. It might be overkill for a single config file, but that will give you the opportunity to have all of your application data in one place, should you add even more.
How can I find the user's home directory in a cross platform manner in C++? i.e. /home/user in Linux, C:\Users\user\ on Windows Vista, C:\Documents And Settings\user\ on Windows XP, and whatever it is that Macs use. (I think it's /User/user)
Basically, what I'm looking for is a C++ way of doing this (example in python)
os.path.expanduser("~")
I don't think it's possible to completely hide the Windows/Unix divide with this one (unless, maybe, Boost has something).
The most portable way would have to be getenv("HOME") on Unix and concatenating the results of getenv("HOMEDRIVE") and getenv("HOMEPATH") on Windows.
This is possible, and the best way to find it is to study the source code of os.path.expanduser("~"), it is really easy to replicate the same functionality in C.
You'll have to add some #ifdef directives to cover different systems.
Here are the rules that will provide you the HOME directory
Windows: env USERPROFILE or if this fails, concatenate HOMEDRIVE+HOMEPATH
Linux, Unix and OS X: env HOME or if this fails, use getpwuid() (example code)
Important remark: many people are assuming that HOME environment variable is always available on Unix but this is not true, one good example would be OS X.
On OS X when you run an application from GUI (not console) this will not have this variable set so you need to use the getpwuid().
The home directory isn't really a cross-platform concept. Your suggestion of the root of the profile directory (%USERPROFILE%) is a fair analogy, but depending what you want to do once you have the directory, you might want one of the Application Data directories, or the user's My Documents. On UNIX, you might create a hidden ".myapp" in the home directory to keep your files in, but that's not right on Windows.
Your best bet is to write specific code for each platform, to get at the directory you want in each case. Depending how correct you want to be, it might be enough to use env vars: HOME on UNIX, USERPROFILE or APPDATA (depending what you need) on Windows.
On UNIX at least (any Windows folks care to comment?), it's usually good practice to use the HOME environment variable if it's set, even if it disagrees with the directory specific in the password file. Then, on the odd occasion when users want all apps to read their data from a different directory, it will still work.