Editing Advanced Installation (section)

=Multi-user installs=
Some organizations may find it desirable to deny write access of some users to all RSFSRC/RSFROOT except their own user directory. Fortunately, this can be easily done by placing the restricted user dirs outside RSFSRC/RSFROOT, i.e. in their home dirs, say /home/joe/rsfsrc. In order to move a user's directory out of RSFSRC, you must:
* "tell" the SConstruct in the user's dir where to find RSFSRC so that when the user builds in his directory, it can import <tt>configure.py</tt> and <tt>config.py</tt> You do that by setting the environment variable RSFSRC to the absolute path of the Madagascar source root, and by making sure that lines 2 and 3 in the users' SConstruct files are
<syntaxhighlight lang="python">
srcroot = os.environ.get('RSFSRC', '../..')
sys.path.append(srcroot)
</syntaxhighlight> 
and then replace <tt>../..</tt> throughout the SConstruct using <tt>os.path.join</tt> and the <tt>srcroot</tt> variable.
* "tell" the build scripts about the user's dir, so that it is included in the builds launched from RSFSRC. You do that with a symbolic link:
<syntaxhighlight lang="bash">
ln -s /home/joe/rsfsrc $RSFSRC/user/joe
</syntaxhighlight>
''When the link exists'', those of Joe's programs that are mentioned in the "prog" string in SConstruct get included in the distribution, complete with self-doc. If Joe is just learning how to code and his stuff breaks the build, just remove the symbolic link. Even if build+installs are done after the link is removed, his stable programs and self-doc will continue to remain installed system-wide as long as the admin does not type <tt>scons -c install</tt> (not likely).
* point the user's RSFDOC environment variable to a location where the user has write access
* edit the users' SConstruct so that it uses the RSF library and headers already installed in $RSFROOT/lib and $RSFROOT/include , instead of building again the whole <tt>librsf</tt> with user-specific flags in <tt>RSFSRC/filt/lib/</tt>. To do that, replace in the user's SConstruct the env.Prepend statement with
<syntaxhighlight lang="python">
rsfroot = os.environ.get('RSFROOT','/usr/local/rsf')

env.Prepend(CPPPATH=[os.path.join(rsfroot,'include')],
            LIBPATH=[os.path.join(rsfroot,'lib')],
            LIBS=['rsf'])
</syntaxhighlight>
* If the link from RSFSRC to Joe's directory was not made, add Joe's directory to his own path so that he can execute his own binaries.

To understand how $DATAPATH disk space issues may become an issue in a multi-user environment, refer to the [[Advanced_Installation#Disk_space|Disk Space subsection]] at the beginning of this document.