run directory location

[wt]

Most modern Linux distros prefer what was /var/run to be located at /run now. Fedora actually symlinks /var/run -> /run. I think most other mainstream distros do this also.

I think that it would be nice to be able to specify the default "run" directory at config time. I see that right now it's located in spnav.h (via the SOCKNAME and PIDFILE defines) with no option for configuration of only the directory. Maybe simply add a RUN_DIR define at the very least and use that for the SOCK_NAME and PIDFILE defines as the first cut if no one steps up to implement the configuration option?

[jtsiomb]

This issue has come up before. The reason I'm not very keen to do that, is that applications expect the socket at that very specific location, and if spacenavd is compiled with a different location, applications will just fail to find it.

I don't have a good solution for this problem, so for now I'm just ignoring it. In any case, as you said distributions set up symlinks, because obviously more programs require /var/run. If it was just this I wouldn't fret at all about it. The only reason I'm even considering it a problem, is that it stands in the way of implementing another often requested feature, the ability to run spacenavd as interactively from a desktop session.

[wt]

Well, how about this? Would it be possible to opt out of a pid file altogether. Systemd does not need a pid file in order to reliably kill the daemon. So, maybe a flag could be added to opt out of writing a pid file?

[jtsiomb]

Certainly. Moreover there's no compatibility issue in changing the location of the pid file, so I added an option to change the default path. Use /dev/null to disable altogether. (Commit 8cc655e)

[wt]

I like that change. Thank you!

[wt]

Should probably update the systemd unit file to use that option.

[wt]

I created PR #123 so you don't have to do it.

[IntenseWiggling]

With libspnav allowing you to specify the location of the socket via SPNAV_SOCKET or socket = in /etc/spnavrc, does it not make sense to similarly allowing specifying the socket location with spacenavd?

Ref: https://github.com/FreeSpacenav/libspnav/blob/bcc2e295d156cceaa0c48911251cbffa09e8c626/src/spnav.c#L120-L144