[darcs-users] darcs patch: always respect $HOME when looking for ~/.darcs.

[Trent W. Buck]

Trent W.Buck <trentbuck at gmail.com> writes:
> I'm reviewing your Darcs branch for good ideas that we can snarf into
> the main repo.  I was a bit puzzled by this patch.  In what
> circumstances is the existing getAppUserDataDirectory usage
> insufficient?
>
> The only case I can think of is when someone wants Windows to behave
> in a "unix-like" way, i.e. to look at %HOME% instead of %APPDATA%.
>
> Sat Nov 15 23:30:57 EST 2008  David Roundy <droundy at darcs.net>
>   * always respect $HOME when looking for ~/.darcs.

David confirmed off-list that this patch exists to allow relocating
~/.darcs when running the test suite on Windows.  Armed with this
knowledge, I found that we had duplicated this intent:

  | Mon Nov 17 05:01:24 EST 2008  Eric Kow <eric.kow at gmail.com>
  |   * Add DARCS_TESTING_HOME to shell harness
  |   This enables Petr's workaround for Windows not using $HOME by
  |   default
  |
  | Thu Nov 13 07:04:57 EST 2008  Eric Kow <kowey at darcs.net>
  |   * Resolve conflict between my UserProfile override and
  |     DARCS_TESTING_HOME
  |   We undo the UserProfile because it had no useful effect
  |
  | Wed Nov 12 09:28:06 EST 2008  Petr Rockai <me at mornfall.net>
  |   * Enable .darcs location override through DARCS_TESTING_HOME that
  |      also works on Windows.
  |
  |   With only overriding $HOME, on win32 we get darcs still looking
  |   into the windows-specific user data directory for .darcs, which in
  |   turn breaks the testsuite (which relies on overriding HOME). This
  |   patch should address that problem, albeit in a little inelegant
  |   fashion.
  |
  | Thu Nov 13 04:16:34 EST 2008  Eric Kow <kowey at darcs.net>
  |   * Override UserProfile environment variable in (Perl)
  |   shell_harness

Is there any reason we can't simply have the test harness set the $HOME
*and* %APPDATA% environment variables?