4 ms·

What Rob is griping about is more analogous to $HOME/.config now, or /var/run for non-user specific stuff.

by kodah 4y ago

t-3 4y ago
It's even worse with dotfiles nowadays than before. We have the cluttered "xdg" dotfile directories, and then a bunch of stuff makes random dotfiles/dotdirs in the home directory, and then .profiles/shellrcs/xinits that are basically required. Every single program seems to think you want a scrollback history, a configuration directory, or some random garbage to remind of you of that one time used it.
- samatman 4y ago
  Complying with the XDG standard seems about as good as a stringly typed OS like Unix can get. Part of which is making sure that the defaults the program chooses may be overridden by consistent environment variables. Programs need some way to persist their own state and configuration, after all. The fact that XDG is more honored in the breach is tiresome, but this can at least be corrected, and it's well enough put together to be a steady-state approach to wrangling dotfiles.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nmz 4y ago
  Windows fixed this by just having %APPDATA%, and to me, its a great idea. No .config, no .local, no .share, no .randomfile, each installed program has its directory in hidden directory, and nobody has to know what each directory is for, and sure, this is what ~/.config is for some, but I also see there's some stuff in ~/.local/share and so on. To expand on this, when a program gets installed, it should write its binary location in a file, then if you ever erase it, a doesthisexistanymore $Config/dir/*/symlink | remove_entire_configuration_directory should be run via cron daily. No manual cleanup, ever.
  - kodah 4y ago
    Slight correction here, XDG keys are analogous to Windows standards: https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/README.md

4 ms·

What Rob is griping about is more analogous to $HOME/.config now, or /var/run for non-user specific stuff.

by kodah 4y ago

What Rob is griping about is more analogous to $HOME/.config now, or /var/run for non-user specific stuff.

t-3 4y ago
It's even worse with dotfiles nowadays than before. We have the cluttered "xdg" dotfile directories, and then a bunch of stuff makes random dotfiles/dotdirs in the home directory, and then .profiles/shellrcs/xinits that are basically required. Every single program seems to think you want a scrollback history, a configuration directory, or some random garbage to remind of you of that one time used it.
- samatman 4y ago
  Complying with the XDG standard seems about as good as a stringly typed OS like Unix can get. Part of which is making sure that the defaults the program chooses may be overridden by consistent environment variables. Programs need some way to persist their own state and configuration, after all. The fact that XDG is more honored in the breach is tiresome, but this can at least be corrected, and it's well enough put together to be a steady-state approach to wrangling dotfiles.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nmz 4y ago
  Windows fixed this by just having %APPDATA%, and to me, its a great idea. No .config, no .local, no .share, no .randomfile, each installed program has its directory in hidden directory, and nobody has to know what each directory is for, and sure, this is what ~/.config is for some, but I also see there's some stuff in ~/.local/share and so on. To expand on this, when a program gets installed, it should write its binary location in a file, then if you ever erase it, a doesthisexistanymore $Config/dir/*/symlink | remove_entire_configuration_directory should be run via cron daily. No manual cleanup, ever.
  - kodah 4y ago
    Slight correction here, XDG keys are analogous to Windows standards: https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/README.md