1.5.8 Library

The Library location contains most of the resources that are located and loaded at runtime. These resources are organized in folders (directories) inside Library; the most important Library folders will be described later on.

Like all systems inspired by OpenStep, resources are mostly organized in bundles and small wrappers that contain both machine-dependent files (such as executables or loadable object files) and general machine-independent resources (such as images or text files). For this reason, the Library location will contain both machine-dependent and machine-independent files.

The structure of the folders within Library is the same in all filesystem layouts, with a few exceptions: in the GNUstep filesystem layout, the Libraries, Headers, Documentation and WebApplications folders are all inside Library, but this is not necessarily true for other filesystem layouts.

Vice versa, it’s common on other filesystem layouts (eg, FHS) to put Applications and Admin Applications as folders inside Library.

In GNUmakefiles, the Library location is available via the GNUSTEP_LIBRARY variable, which is the location for the domain in which the software will be installed. You can also reference the locations in the various domains directly by using the variables GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_LIBRARY, GNUSTEP_NETWORK_LIBRARY, GNUSTEP_LOCAL_LIBRARY and GNUSTEP_USER_LIBRARY.

In gnustep-base, the Library locations are available by using the NSLibraryDirectory directory key for NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains().