I use MacOS for my programming. I like and use the GUI applications that it comes with. But I also do a lot of work with the "terminal" program and use the environmental variables like PATH and others to make programming/using simpler. I also use shell scripts a lot.
I also use different sets of "tools" for different projects that I work on. For example I use DocBook when I need to. But I don't always need to. The same goes with various compilers etc. To make this less confusing I alter environmental variables (like PATH) that I can set/reset when moving to a new project.
Now I want to "simplify" the usage of DocBook in my environment. This includes PATH to find executables (xsltproc, fop, XMLMind. etc.). I also need a simple way to include access to other files such as shell scripts which are made from these tools, ancillary files like other *.xml files etc. Some of these are accessed from within other files and/or shell scripts. I'd like to be able to set things up (install) things so that I can just (temporarily) access all this with simple names without having to include directory names etc. I guess I want sort of "SUPERPATH" which does the same as PATH but for all the files that a package (DocBook) in this example might use. I've read man/hier and looked at how other apps do it, but I'm still confused about it. Can anyone point me to a good reference on how files are "found" and/or some useful examples for doing this?
Note that this isn't really about DocBook - though that is my current interest. I'm really interested in customs/best practices/etc for installing applications which consist of more than just an executable.
