Spring lobby can't find maps in /usr/share/

[InTheMicrowave]

This is on Ubuntu 8.10

The map packs in the repository put the maps in /usr/share/games/spring/maps.
The Spring multiplayer lobby would not find the maps there, preventing me from playing games using those maps. The Spring Downloader would silently refuse to download them because I already had them.

Solution for me was to move everything in /usr/share/games/spring to .spring/maps (where all the manually downloaded maps are). If I had more patience, I would set up some sort of symlink.

Edit: Turns out this only half worked... or something. I still see games where:
the lobby claims I don't have the map
I have the map
Spring downloader will not download the map.

Removing the map completely motivated Spring downloader to grab it. This is a terrible solution.

[BrainDamage]

SpringLobby is oblivion to archive locations, it uses particular functions of a library called unitsync which is shipped with spring to list maps & mods, that library shares code with spring itself, so this is either a packaging problem ( some search paths gets inherited at build-install time ) or spring bug

[Auswaschbar]

• leave the maps where they are
• open /etc/spring/datadir in a text editor (create it if not there)
• write "/usr/share/games/spring" inside
• run springlobby / spring