Hi Roman,
Yeah, I'd spotted the
~/.local/lib/pd/extra
as being canonical from an earlier thread but as 1. I didn't already have that folder 2. historically (dangerous I know) the non-hidden path had always been 'the place' for externals, so I just blithely carried on regardless - ouch(blush).
All below meant with the utmost respect for the work currently being done...
Doesn't this just cause more issues? While I can conceptualise the reasoning for differing usr/lib/puredata (vanilla install) and usr/lib/pd folders - it is another added layer of confusion for newbs (not meant as a pejorative).
Obfuscating externals in hidden folders seems unnecessary (and yes, I'm aware I brought 'canonical' into it /.worms/can of/argh).
I'm not familiar enough with other linux flavours to know this but certainly on debian I have no other ~/.folders on my system, even though the non-hidden path already exists via the apt install (and there's a ton of other programs' 'stuff' in /usr/lib/).
So for me I'd vote for consistency, not one folder with externals via apt and another via deken (as well as the vanilla 'extra') - it's too confusing.
Of course I'm not necessarily saying that there should only be a 'one approach fits all' for all linux flavours (that's not how we roll) but then again it might save lots of people lots of headaches if it was simple, doable and clear across the board (I'm not including Win and Mac here obviously - they've got their own issues). Well, actually having reread that line _-_ ok, I guess that is what I'm saying then - "one method to rule them all".
Certainly for writing documentation this would make things so much easier.
Brilliant that deken can sort all this very soon but for those of us stuck in an eternal 'now' we could do with a solution, or at least a consistent conceptual approach:)