Configure variable set by jbuilder exec

[bobot]

Some tools need to access files in its own share directory. The path to its share module once installed is often hard coded in the binary, but an environment variable allows to change this value. In order to be able to use jbuilder exec with such tools we need to set the environment variable.

Could we add to jbuild file format?

(set-local-exec-env
  ((VAR  <value-with-variable-substitution>) ... )
)

EDIT: forgot a parenthesis for the list

[ghost]

Possibly. I suppose we'd have to think about what happens when the variable is already set manually by the user and why not set it during the build as well, etc...

TBH at this point I'd much rather see progress on #23 or #35 :) These would benefit a lot more people and are hard to workaround, contrary to this request

[bobot]

Do you need anything from me in #35?

[ghost]

Just the changes we discussed by mail, i.e. having a field (import_dirs ...) in library/executable stanzas rather than copy_files at the toplevel. copy_files will be superseded by include

[emillon]

Hi @bobot,

The simplest version would be to allow (env) to define extra environment variables to be defined during the build and execution. That would be pretty simple to implement, but would make it harder to define per-executable environment variables.

Would that fit your use case?

Thanks!

[bobot]

Yes it will. The definition of these variables should allow variable expansions such as the local directory where the share files of some package have been copied locally (in _build as defined in #680).

I'm just wondering if profile in the env stanza could be a "wildcard" to be effective in any profile, just to save some copy-paste perhaps, but it is not needed at first.

[ghost]

@bobot, yep, you can already use _ as profile name to mean all profiles.