5 ms·

The second example is a nice start, but I'd really like to see invisible files/folders in ~/ done away with altogether. So starting with that example, I might

The second example is a nice start, but I'd really like to see invisible files/folders in ~/ done away with altogether. So starting with that example, I might add a visible ~/Library/ folder, then move ~/.config/ and ~/.local/ in there as ~/Library/Config/ and ~/Library/Local/ as normal visible folders. Same for .bashrc, .profile, etc; put them in ~/Library/Config/ without the dots.

drunkpotato 4y ago
Luckily if you’re a developer on MacOS, you can have that too! In addition to ~/.config and a million .dotfiles and .dotdirectories from decades of unixy tools! Truly a cornucopia.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  It's frustrating enough to make a person seriously consider maintaining forks of all the FOSS things they use to fix this one bit of misbehavior.
  - petesergeant 4y ago
    Do any of the Linux distros do this? Strikes me as the kind of thing Debian would do for everything in apt
    - gjvc 4y ago
      Do you have any examples of Debian doing this?
      - petesergeant 4y ago
        Sure. In software of mine distributed by Debian, there's usually a "debian/patches" directory, that I didn't add, that's changes the Debian project wanted to make to the system. I'm sure there's a formal name for that system. Most Debian packages seem to have one.
  - spott 4y ago
    Start with pythons “projectdirs”, which refuses to allow mac systems to use XDG or at least have that option. https://github.com/platformdirs/platformdirs/issues/4 https://github.com/platformdirs/platformdirs/issues/4
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  In Windows we get dotfiles from any tool badly ported from unixland, plus the myriad ways specified by various Windows standards over the past several decades, plus the innumerable ways that different entities have chosen to interpret those standards, plus whatever bullshit non-standard locations some asshole thought up and decided to ship. Where is the config for program X? It could be in the same directory as X, HKLM\Software\X, HKCU\Software\X, The HKLM\Software\XWOW6432Node\X, AppData\Local\X, AppData\Remote\X, AppData\LocalLow\X, ProgramData\X, USERPROFILE\.X, USERPROFILE\Documents\X, USERPROFILE\Saved Games\X, USERPROFILE\Documents\My Saved Games\X, USERPROFILE\.config\X...
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    Yep. Makes backing up configurations on Windows systems somewhat nightmarish… it's most practical to just back up the whole install and then pray that you'll never have to go digging for any specific bit of config in particular.
pornel 4y ago
Yeah, it's a bit alien on macOS. There is no good mapping for some of these folders. For example, on macOS application configuration isn't even supposed to be done directly via application-specific files. macOS has its User Defaults subsystem, with `defaults read`/`defaults write` commands. And of course this isn't usable by typical command-line tools that don't have a Bundle ID.
- larusso 4y ago
  The system that you mentioned is specifically for macOS Desktop apps. I think even Apple is drawing a line there. I don‘t know of any Apple commandline tool which has a configuration in plist format etc. But I might be wrong.
  - pornel 4y ago
    Apple ships some BSD and Linux tools (openssh, git) without changing how they store configuration, but anything written with macOS in mind has other methods. For example, Apple's command-line build tools for Xcode inherit GUI Xcode's settings and project files that are plists. launchctl uses XML plists in ~/Library instead of /etc. Daemons like Spotlight and Time Machine are configured via plist-editing GUIs or mdutil/tmutil commands.
joshka 4y ago
What does Library actually mean though? ;)
- still_grokking 4y ago
  Apple macOS. Don't ask…
- mmphosis 4y ago
  Library is such a ridiculous name. It used to be called the Preferences Folder AKA etc AKA .config AKA .local AKA ~/\.* This is the problem with preferences: everyone's preferences are different!
TacticalCoder 4y ago
> The second example is a nice start, but I'd really like to see invisible files/folders in ~/ done away with altogether. A great many amazing tools shall, by default, skip searching in hidden files (and gain a great speedup thanks to doing that). You'd have to modify all these tools so that they'd skip Library/ by default. Also, related to that, what would you do with .git/? Move prjs/fizzbuz/.git to Library/fizzbuzz/git while keeping prjs/fizzbuzz? This is, hopefully, never going to happen.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Things like .git are fine I think, because they’re localized one-offs and have more of a reason to be hidden. It’s the home folder’s function of a junk drawer that makes invisible files/folders a problem there.
- mmphosis 4y ago
  I already do this. .git/ is a visible folder name-of-project/ in another location: $(infernalpath loc)/version-control/git/path-to-project/name-of-project $(infernalpath loc)/version-control/fossil/path-to-project/name-of-project
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
If everything honored this spec, including the part where it reads environment variables to see where the different directories are, you could do that by sticking the right variables in your environment. I think the one legitimate exception to the rule is profile, because you need that in order to set the variables in the first place. So that one would somehow have to be hard coded to at least have a wider search path
- clhodapp 4y ago
  Maybe your profile location ought to be something that you're able to set through chsh
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    Huh. So I was about to disagree because that felt like a kludge, but actually you're right; setting your shell and its environment are both things that have to be set before the user's normal environment is working for bootstrapping reasons, so yeah, it does make perfect sense to cover both with the same mechanism. Or maybe to make it more generic we could replace the "shell" line in passwd with a "login command" entry, which is always executed by the system /bin/sh with the system environment from /etc/profile? Then you could set it to `XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/mydotfiles /bin/shell`, or `/bin/decrypt-my-home; export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/Library/config; exec /bin/bash --init-file $HOME/Library/bash/bashrc` or whatever you want.
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    There is a system-wide /etc/profile or /etc/profile.d/ Likewise, zsh will look for /etc/zshrc And zsh will actually look at $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout So perhaps you can set the value of ZDOTDIR in one of the systemwide locations to use "$HOME/foo/bar/zsh/" and this way zsh will use ~/foo/bar/zsh/ as the location for the user specific .zshrc and other mentioned files for every user https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Computer_Science/Operating_Systems/Linux_-_The_Penguin_Marches_On_(McClanahan)/02%3A_User_Group_Administration/5.03%3A_System_Wide_User_Profiles/5.03.1%3A_System_Wide_User_Profiles%3A_etc-profile https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Computer_Science/Oper... https://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Setting_system_wide_shell_options https://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Setting_system_wide_shell_o... https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Intro/intro_3.html https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Intro/intro_3.html

drunkpotato 4y ago

Luckily if you’re a developer on MacOS, you can have that too! In addition to ~/.config and a million .dotfiles and .dotdirectories from decades of unixy tools! Truly a cornucopia.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
It's frustrating enough to make a person seriously consider maintaining forks of all the FOSS things they use to fix this one bit of misbehavior.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  Do any of the Linux distros do this? Strikes me as the kind of thing Debian would do for everything in apt
  - gjvc 4y ago
    Do you have any examples of Debian doing this?
    - petesergeant 4y ago
      Sure. In software of mine distributed by Debian, there's usually a "debian/patches" directory, that I didn't add, that's changes the Debian project wanted to make to the system. I'm sure there's a formal name for that system. Most Debian packages seem to have one.
- spott 4y ago
  Start with pythons “projectdirs”, which refuses to allow mac systems to use XDG or at least have that option. https://github.com/platformdirs/platformdirs/issues/4 https://github.com/platformdirs/platformdirs/issues/4
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
In Windows we get dotfiles from any tool badly ported from unixland, plus the myriad ways specified by various Windows standards over the past several decades, plus the innumerable ways that different entities have chosen to interpret those standards, plus whatever bullshit non-standard locations some asshole thought up and decided to ship. Where is the config for program X? It could be in the same directory as X, HKLM\Software\X, HKCU\Software\X, The HKLM\Software\XWOW6432Node\X, AppData\Local\X, AppData\Remote\X, AppData\LocalLow\X, ProgramData\X, USERPROFILE\.X, USERPROFILE\Documents\X, USERPROFILE\Saved Games\X, USERPROFILE\Documents\My Saved Games\X, USERPROFILE\.config\X...
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Yep. Makes backing up configurations on Windows systems somewhat nightmarish… it's most practical to just back up the whole install and then pray that you'll never have to go digging for any specific bit of config in particular.

pornel 4y ago

Yeah, it's a bit alien on macOS. There is no good mapping for some of these folders. For example, on macOS application configuration isn't even supposed to be done directly via application-specific files. macOS has its User Defaults subsystem, with `defaults read`/`defaults write` commands. And of course this isn't usable by typical command-line tools that don't have a Bundle ID.

larusso 4y ago
The system that you mentioned is specifically for macOS Desktop apps. I think even Apple is drawing a line there. I don‘t know of any Apple commandline tool which has a configuration in plist format etc. But I might be wrong.
- pornel 4y ago
  Apple ships some BSD and Linux tools (openssh, git) without changing how they store configuration, but anything written with macOS in mind has other methods. For example, Apple's command-line build tools for Xcode inherit GUI Xcode's settings and project files that are plists. launchctl uses XML plists in ~/Library instead of /etc. Daemons like Spotlight and Time Machine are configured via plist-editing GUIs or mdutil/tmutil commands.

joshka 4y ago

What does Library actually mean though? ;)

still_grokking 4y ago
Apple macOS. Don't ask…
mmphosis 4y ago
Library is such a ridiculous name. It used to be called the Preferences Folder AKA etc AKA .config AKA .local AKA ~/\.* This is the problem with preferences: everyone's preferences are different!

TacticalCoder 4y ago

> The second example is a nice start, but I'd really like to see invisible files/folders in ~/ done away with altogether. A great many amazing tools shall, by default, skip searching in hidden files (and gain a great speedup thanks to doing that). You'd have to modify all these tools so that they'd skip Library/ by default. Also, related to that, what would you do with .git/? Move prjs/fizzbuz/.git to Library/fizzbuzz/git while keeping prjs/fizzbuzz? This is, hopefully, never going to happen.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
Things like .git are fine I think, because they’re localized one-offs and have more of a reason to be hidden. It’s the home folder’s function of a junk drawer that makes invisible files/folders a problem there.
mmphosis 4y ago
I already do this. .git/ is a visible folder name-of-project/ in another location: $(infernalpath loc)/version-control/git/path-to-project/name-of-project $(infernalpath loc)/version-control/fossil/path-to-project/name-of-project

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

If everything honored this spec, including the part where it reads environment variables to see where the different directories are, you could do that by sticking the right variables in your environment. I think the one legitimate exception to the rule is profile, because you need that in order to set the variables in the first place. So that one would somehow have to be hard coded to at least have a wider search path

clhodapp 4y ago
Maybe your profile location ought to be something that you're able to set through chsh
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  Huh. So I was about to disagree because that felt like a kludge, but actually you're right; setting your shell and its environment are both things that have to be set before the user's normal environment is working for bootstrapping reasons, so yeah, it does make perfect sense to cover both with the same mechanism. Or maybe to make it more generic we could replace the "shell" line in passwd with a "login command" entry, which is always executed by the system /bin/sh with the system environment from /etc/profile? Then you could set it to `XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/mydotfiles /bin/shell`, or `/bin/decrypt-my-home; export XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/Library/config; exec /bin/bash --init-file $HOME/Library/bash/bashrc` or whatever you want.
- codetrotter 4y ago
  There is a system-wide /etc/profile or /etc/profile.d/ Likewise, zsh will look for /etc/zshrc And zsh will actually look at $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout So perhaps you can set the value of ZDOTDIR in one of the systemwide locations to use "$HOME/foo/bar/zsh/" and this way zsh will use ~/foo/bar/zsh/ as the location for the user specific .zshrc and other mentioned files for every user https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Computer_Science/Operating_Systems/Linux_-_The_Penguin_Marches_On_(McClanahan)/02%3A_User_Group_Administration/5.03%3A_System_Wide_User_Profiles/5.03.1%3A_System_Wide_User_Profiles%3A_etc-profile https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Computer_Science/Oper... https://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Setting_system_wide_shell_options https://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Setting_system_wide_shell_o... https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Intro/intro_3.html https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Intro/intro_3.html