Re: st: ado file location in Macintosh OS X

[Michael Hanson <mshanson@mac.com>]

On Feb 2, 2007, at 8:54 PM, Michael McCulloch wrote:

> Hello,
> I've migrated to the Mac, and located my ado file location.
	[snip]

> When I ask Stata to examine the directories, I see:
>
> . sysdir
>    	STATA:  /Applications/Stata/
>  	UPDATES:  /Applications/Stata/ado/updates/
>     	BASE:  /Applications/Stata/ado/base/
>     	SITE:  /Applications/Stata/ado/site/
>     	PLUS:  ~/ado/plus/
> 	PERSONAL:  ~/ado/personal/
> 	OLDPLACE:  ~/ado/
	This message brings to mind one of my pet peeves with the way Stata  
installs on a Mac:  by placing the directory for PLUS / PERSONAL /  
OLDPLACE ado files in the user's home directory, one of Apple's  
guidelines concerning the location of application installed files --  
"Don't Pollute User Space" -- is violated.  (For more information,  
see "Where to Put Application Files" <http://developer.apple.com/ 
documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPFileSystem/Articles/ 
WhereToPutFiles.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001411>.)

	IMHO, the following is more consistent with Apple's guidelines for  
the file system:

    	PLUS:  ~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/plus/
	PERSONAL:  ~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/personal/
	OLDPLACE:  ~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/

In fact, I have done exactly that through the following commands in  
my profile.do:

sysdir set OLDPLACE "~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/"
sysdir set PLUS "~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/plus/"
sysdir set PERSONAL "~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/personal/"

This personalized approach works perfectly well, and yet I've always  
wondered why ~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/ is not the  
default installation location.  Is there an argument for the location  
currently used by the installer that I'm missing?

					-- Mike
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