[dev] Re: XDG directories

David Engster writes:
> Kris Maglione writes:
>> While on the one hand, I think that the people who wrote the XDG spec
>> are raving mad[1], on the other, I hate applications clogging up my
>> home directory with dot-files. I'm considering moving ~/.wmii to
>> ~/.config/wmii.
>
> I'm trying to understand which problem exactly is solved by this. I
> tried to read the "XDG Base Directory Specification" [1] but I admit I
> didn't get past "Basics". How is fiddling with XDG_DATA_HOME,
> XDG_CONFIG_HOME, XDG_DATA_DIRS, XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and XDG_CACHE_HOME
> better than a dotfile or dot-directory in your $HOME?

OK, I've tried the next section.

Can someone explain to me what XDG_DATA_HOME really is for? I know what
the spec says ("directory relative to which user specific data files
should be stored"), but then it doesn't make sense to me that its
default is '~/.local/share'. Since XDG_DATA_DIRS default is
'/usr/share:/usr/local/share', and data in XDG_DATA_HOME overrides
those, it seems they want to mimic the share hierarchy locally? They
somehow want to separate configuration from user data, but then they mix
user data with application data? I don't get it.

-David
Received on Fri Jun 11 2010 - 13:17:18 UTC