3 ms·

it's certainly easier to keep a single directory under version control and share between Linux and macOS

by nasduia 2mo ago

oblio 2mo ago
As in, $HOME? Version controlling it needs to be done very carefully.
gwerbin 2mo ago
Yeah but what happens when it's a mix of config and local state like logs and the app database?
- Defletter 2mo ago
  Looking around my own cluttered home folder, the pattern seems to be that applications will split their "singlefolder" into a subtree. For example: - .sdkman has: bin, candidates, contrib, etc, ext, libexec, src, tmp, var - .gitkraken has: logs, notif, profiles, repohooks, service, themes - .mullvad-browser has: Downloads, .cache, .config, .local, .mullvad - .dropbox has: events, instance1, instance_db, logs, machine_storage, metrics, ssa_events - .steam has: bin, bin32, bin64, debian-installation, root, sdk32, sdk64, steam - .xpipe has: cache, logs, settings, shell, storage, webview ...etc I will say that even though I really don't like having a cluttered home folder, I do appreciate things being more or less in one place and so can be easily uninstalled and cleaned up. Flatsweep even being a thing is a testament to the tedium created by dispersing everything across the file system. It reminds me of macOS and not in a good way: I had an equivalent to Flatsweep on my old macbook but I couldn't remember its name so I searched "macos app cleanup tool", and the first page is just a bunch of comparison articles for the 10 (or whatever) best cleanup tools. This shouldn't be a thing. Alas, it is because applications can't or wont clean up after themselves.
  - gwerbin 2mo ago
    Totally valid, and the Unix-style filesystem sprawl is definitely a pain sometimes. On the other hand, when an application does follow standards, you always know where something is, and just by looking at the name of the directory you know what's in there. The other thing that's nice about the XDG standard is that it generally encourages developers to split binary state data, configuration, etc. even if you do it all within one folder, that's better (for the user) than jumbling it altogether in one big SQLite database or whatever. It is a note that a lot of applications and even package managers are kind of moving back to the model you describe. For example Homebrew installs each package into its own prefix and symlinks into /opt/homebrew/bin,lib,etc... I still don't like hard coding the MYAPP_HOME dir in ~/.myapp and prefer an environment variable to configure it. Personally I put all such folders into ~/.local/opt/$MYAPP if possible.

it's certainly easier to keep a single directory under version control and share between Linux and macOS

by nasduia 2mo ago

it's certainly easier to keep a single directory under version control and share between Linux and macOS

oblio 2mo ago

As in, $HOME? Version controlling it needs to be done very carefully.

gwerbin 2mo ago

Yeah but what happens when it's a mix of config and local state like logs and the app database?

Defletter 2mo ago
Looking around my own cluttered home folder, the pattern seems to be that applications will split their "singlefolder" into a subtree. For example: - .sdkman has: bin, candidates, contrib, etc, ext, libexec, src, tmp, var - .gitkraken has: logs, notif, profiles, repohooks, service, themes - .mullvad-browser has: Downloads, .cache, .config, .local, .mullvad - .dropbox has: events, instance1, instance_db, logs, machine_storage, metrics, ssa_events - .steam has: bin, bin32, bin64, debian-installation, root, sdk32, sdk64, steam - .xpipe has: cache, logs, settings, shell, storage, webview ...etc I will say that even though I really don't like having a cluttered home folder, I do appreciate things being more or less in one place and so can be easily uninstalled and cleaned up. Flatsweep even being a thing is a testament to the tedium created by dispersing everything across the file system. It reminds me of macOS and not in a good way: I had an equivalent to Flatsweep on my old macbook but I couldn't remember its name so I searched "macos app cleanup tool", and the first page is just a bunch of comparison articles for the 10 (or whatever) best cleanup tools. This shouldn't be a thing. Alas, it is because applications can't or wont clean up after themselves.
- gwerbin 2mo ago
  Totally valid, and the Unix-style filesystem sprawl is definitely a pain sometimes. On the other hand, when an application does follow standards, you always know where something is, and just by looking at the name of the directory you know what's in there. The other thing that's nice about the XDG standard is that it generally encourages developers to split binary state data, configuration, etc. even if you do it all within one folder, that's better (for the user) than jumbling it altogether in one big SQLite database or whatever. It is a note that a lot of applications and even package managers are kind of moving back to the model you describe. For example Homebrew installs each package into its own prefix and symlinks into /opt/homebrew/bin,lib,etc... I still don't like hard coding the MYAPP_HOME dir in ~/.myapp and prefer an environment variable to configure it. Personally I put all such folders into ~/.local/opt/$MYAPP if possible.