Extensions can not be installed

[liamtimms]

Hi all,

I've been using Slicer on Arch Linux without a problem via the 3dslicer-bin package (which just downloads the binary from the slicer site and installs it on the system) for quite some time. You can see the full PKGBUILD script (simply bash with some variables for use by the package manager) here: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/tree/PKGBUILD?h=3dslicer-bin
However, I'm hitting an issue with the extension manager in recent releases.

Previously, it seems Slicer happily installed extensions into $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/NA-MIC/Extensions-<somenumbers>. In the newest release, it seems like Slicer is attempting to write Extensions to /opt/3dslicer/NA-MIC/Extensions-29738. Since I'm usually running Slicer as a normal user but have it installed system-wide in /opt/ this fails due to the lack of permission to change /opt. Ideally, I'd like to avoid running Slicer with full sudo powers and have it continue to use the old user-level directories for extensions. Unfortunately, this also seems to be stopping me from effectively changing my user preferences.

Steps to reproduce

Install Slicer on Arch via the AUR PKGBUILD (see: https://slicer.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user_guide/getting_started.html#archlinux). Then launch the extension manager.

Expected behavior

I'd expect another folder to show up with the new Slicer release. My current NA-MIC user directory looks like this:

~/.config/NA-MIC$ ls
Extensions-28257  Extensions-28701  Extensions-29402   Slicer-28257.ini  Slicer-28701.ini  Slicer-29402.ini  Slicer.ini

but Slicer is looking for /opt/3dslicer/NA-MIC/Extensions-29738 when I would expect it to create a new entry there.

Environment

Slicer:

Name            : 3dslicer-bin
Version         : 4.11.20210226-1
Description     : A multi-platform, free open source software package for visualization and medical image computing
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://www.slicer.org
Provides        : 3dslicer
Depends On      : dbus  glib2
Required By     : None
Optional For    : python-nipype
Installed Size  : 1128.51 MiB
Packager        : Liam Timms <timms5000@gmail.com>
Build Date      : Mon 15 Mar 2021 12:02:09 PM EDT
Install Date    : Mon 15 Mar 2021 12:08:05 PM EDT
Install Reason  : Explicitly installed

Additional info on environment:

OS: Arch Linux x86_64
Kernel: 5.10.25-1-lts
DE: GNOME 3.38.4

[liamtimms]

As a quick follow up, I realized after writing this that I could just modify the packaging to install Slicer into my ~/bin and then chown the directory to belong to my user. Doing so works as expected and I see Extensions-29738 and Slicer-29738.ini showing up in that directory now. I'm going to leave this issue open in case the change (no longer using $XDG_CONFIG_HOME) and it's effect on system-level root installs was not intended.

[lassoan]

If you install Slicer as an administrator then you need to install all the extensions and Python packages, too. See some more explanation here: https://discourse.slicer.org/t/unable-to-install-extensions-when-slicer-is-installed-in-system-location/16588

[lassoan]

Closing this, as the change was intended. I've added a note to the migration guide.