Linux @lemmy.ml bahmanm @lemmy.ml 8mo ago

My fellow software engineer, It's the year 2024...

mastodon.social Bahman M. (@bahmanm@mastodon.social)

Attached: 1 image My fellow software engineer, It's the year 2024. Please store your #Linux #desktop application configurations ONLY in `$XDG_CONFIG_HOME`. NOT in `$HOME` or other non-standard or obsolete places. May #FreeDesktop be your guide. https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/...

Shameless plug: I am the author.

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General Programming Discussion @lemmy.ml bahmanm @lemmy.ml 8mo ago

My fellow software engineer, It's the year 2024...

mastodon.social /@bahmanm/112784979111021667

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122 comments

Golang puts shit specifically in $HOME/go. Not even .go. Just plain go.

Why is it so difficult to follow industry standards
- That's what happens when you don't set $GOPATH I think
  
  That doesn't make it better.
  
  Of course, but that's not the point. There should be a sane default, and there isn't one
- Go pisses me off with that. I separate projects the way I want but go wants every project written in go in one big directory?
  
  I really didn’t like this either. It’s quite surprising, because the rest of Go tooling is quite nice. Not having a venv, or at least something like pnpm-style node_modules is weird
- Google
  
  following industry standards
  
  pick one
  
  This post literally links to the leading one.
- off the shelf go was too annoying for me
  
  Nowadays I set GOENV_ROOT to an XDG location and use goenv instead.
Shout out to xdg-ninja - it'll find files that are in your home and suggest how to configure the app to use XDG instead. https://github.com/b3nj5m1n/xdg-ninja
- Strange that some apps allow configuring it rather than just doing it automatically...
  
  That's the usual open source way. The config probably came later so they just added the option without changing the default because that would break backward compatibility.
  
  And there would be too much boring work to build a migration.
- Thanks, I hadn't heard of that. Time to add a few hundred lines to my dotfiles :)
- After running it and properly configure the paths I once again came to the conclusion: I fucking hate Google.
I wish they used them all, especially XDG_CACHE_HOME which can become pretty big pretty fast.
- And i wish there was a separate XDG_LOG_HOME or $HOME/.local/log, with logrotate preconfigured to look there.
  
  Or $HOME/.var/log.
100% agree and I also despise devs who do this on windows, instead of using %appdata% they’re using c:\users\username\.myappisimportantandtotallydeservesthisdir
- I have to use a separate Documents folder for my actual documents lol
- Not to mention - this isn't necessarily the correct place for Windows anyway. That is exactly why they standardized stuff around Vista.
  
  Plus - what about apps that store an ungodly amount data in there? Personally, I only keep the OS and basic app data (such as configs and cache) on the partition and nothing else.
  
  Then something like Minecraft comes along and it's like "humpty dumpty I'm crapping a lumpty" and stores all its data in ".minecraft" right there in your user directory.
  
  Then you gotta symlink stuff around and it becomes a mess...
- I think that also causes issues for roaming profiles and folder redirection. If roaming is turned on then everything in the %appdata%\roaming folder is synced to a server. %AppData%\Local is not. So if your app is using %AppData%\Roaming for temporary data then you are causing a whole bunch on unnecessary IO. Same for using Documents since that if often synced.
- To be fair here, appdata is technically a hidden folder and there are lots of reasons an app would want it's data accessable by the user.
  
  Yes but then just spam the documents folder like anyone else, don’t hoard the home root for no reason except that is a lazy cross platform port
I didn't know about this (and thankfully, haven't written anything public). I've been trying to fix an install script for an OSS project that doesn't work on immutable distros, and using the XDG Base Directory specs might just be the panacea I was looking for!
Where did i read this... basically, the .file being hidden being a bug in the early unix filesystem, which got misused to hide configuration files.

Offenders despite XDG-variables set and with no workaround:

.android: hardcoded in adb and i guess something in mtp too

.pki: some tool/library Firefox and Chromium sometimes use.

.steam: yes, that

Btw, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory
Shameless flex
- I regret checking this
- Whoa I’m a stickler for getting as much as I can out but even I have .zshenv and some other too hard to figure out things in there. How’d you manage a total wipeout?
  
  zsh is actually easy and it is detailed in the archwiki
  
  You have to set $ZDOTDIR in /etc/zsh/zshenv and iirc that was the only location that required root to edit.
  
  For the rest of stuff, here is how I fix steam for example and you can check the rest of my dotfiles for how I configured zsh and all of that.
  
  Although I haven't updated them, I still had a .local directory back then, it was 1 week ago that I changed .local for Local and that let to an issue with distrobox which I made a PR fixing it that's still open though.
- This is probably a dumb question, but what program is that?
  
  Looks like thunar (default file manager on xfce)
  
  thunar (and the smaller window is the xfce4-terminal).
- ls Volatile
  
  It's empty lol, it's a directory on tmpfs that i use to build programs and similar stuff to not be hammering my ssd with unnecessary writes.
  
  I have $XDG_CACHE_HOME in tmp as well and I moved the mesa sharer caches to $XDG_STATE_HOME as that's really the only thing so far I've needed to preserve.
Here is a more concise way to achieve the same thing:

ls -ACd ~/.??*/ | sed -e "s#$HOME/##g"
- I think that can be boiled down to only cd; echo .*/
  
  Maybe throw a ;cd - on the end if the change of directory is unwanted.
  
  if you need to preserve cd - you might be able to do this with pushd and popd
- ls -A | grep "^\."
  
  I had to make a dummy .dotfile to test because I don't have hidden files in my home.
My fellow FOSS users, patches are welcome.
there's no place like 127.0.0.1

there's no place like XDG_CONFIG_HOME.
BRB, putting in a PR to make /etc mode 1777 by default.
vim now has an option to put the .vim folder in ~/.config; though I'm not sure if the default plugin/package & syntax folders can be set under ~/.local/share.
- You can also just use neovim instead, among other improvements, it's configs are in the xdg dirs
YOU'RE NOT MY MOM I'LL DO WHAT I WANT
yes please!
Are there abstractions available around the XDG specifications to resolve the proper paths?
- What language? Python has PyXDG.
  
  In shell it's simply
  
  XDG_DATA_HOME="${XDG_DATA_HOME:-"$HOME"/.local/share}" XDG_CONFIG_HOME="${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-"$HOME"/.config}" etc.
  
  Thanks, I did not know about PyXDG. That was the type of thing I was asking about.
- Use the environment variables.
  
  I do. But you might have misunderstood my question. I was not asking for assistance. I was just curious if there are libraries available which allow easy adoption of the XDG specification. I imagine that such abstractions would be useful for multi-platform software and generally to lower the bar for adoption.
حق
Probably half the entries in that list are not GUI apps, and XDG doesn't apply (though some still support it). For some others there (like emacs) XDG is used if it exists.
- XDG doesn't apply for CLI apps? About half of dirs I still have cluttering my home are GUI apps whose devs refuse to follow the specification, while I see less friction from CLI/TUI devs, since they're the ones actually seeing these hidden locations.
- What makes you think XDG doesn't apply to non GUI apps?
  
  It's already in the name - XDG stands for X Desktop Group (nowadays freedesktop), which works on interoperability for desktop environments. In a pure shell environment (or even if you're not running a full desktop) none of the XDG variables are defined, and especially in shell environments the default fallbacks specified by XDG are not necessarily what the operator would expect.
This would just further complicate things for me. It assumes that 1) the system even has a windowing system/desktop environment or 2) all the installed software is XDG-aware. Most of the time I’m fiddling with headless environments.
- It's not too hard to check for XDG support first and use a few hardcoded directory paths if that is unavailable.
  
  It’s even easier to ignore it altogether, which is what I do. I don’t use “a few” non-XDG-aware things; I use lots an lots of them.
- So yes, "XDG" stands for "Cross-Desktop Group" - but I don't agree that using the spec assumes a windowing system. The base directory spec involves checking for certain environment variables for guidance on where to put files, and falling back to certain defaults if those variables are not set. It works fine on headless systems, and on systems that are not XDG-aware (I suppose that means systems that don't set the relevant env vars).
  
  OTOH as another commenter pointed out the base directory spec can make software work when it otherwise wouldn't on a system that doesn't have a typical home directory layout or permissions.
- The spec doesn't make those assumptions at all, idk where that's coming from.
  
  I have headless machines with XDG vars configured and ones without them. XDG compliant software works in either case, but I'm less likely to use a piece of software that clutters my $HOME.
Whatever happened to Linux being all about choice? Do you want that or not?

https://xkcd.com/927
- You can choose any home directory you want, as long as it's XDG_CONFIG_HOME.
- Are there other relevant standards? The XDG base directory specification has been around for a long time, and is well established.
  
  Maybe your comment wooshed over my head; if so I apologize.
  
  having choices are the opposite of conforming to standards
- Choice, huh? I can't choose where the config files are stored unless I am willing to either dig into an obscure setting, modify the source code and recompile (repeat every time there's an update), or contact the developer's smug beard using smoke signals.
  
  idk that all sounds like choices to me
But what's the difference? It'll be in /home anyways and I heard BSD had some issues with something that could be XDG.
- For me personally I just hate that I do not know where to find configs, especially when using a dotfiles repo, it becomes harder than if they're all available under a common path.
- Better organization and backup / restore. For example if you want to restore config files but don't want to move over the large ".local" folder, applications that write to $HOME will create diifculty.
- Because, like /etc, you know there is a designated place for config files. It's already set for you right there, and there is a standard for it.
  
  /etc is a standard, defined in the filesystem hierarchy standard. This is not:
  
  freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, but we are not an official standards body. There is no requirement for projects to implement all of these specifications, nor certification.
  
  Below are some of the specifications we have produced, many under the banner of 'XDG', which stands for the Cross-Desktop Group.
  
  Its nit-picking, but this is a specification, i.e a preference, not an official standard. It would be great if everyone would agree on just one of these to use, but that isn't a foregone conclusion. Even the actual standard, the FHS, isn't followed by popular OS's like NixOS.
  
  /etc can't be edited on immutable distros and usually apps store the editable config in /home/config and make the /etc one kind of read-only.
- But what’s the difference?
  
  I can only imagine someone asking this if they a) don't use the terminal except if Stackexchange says they should and b) have yet to try and cleanup a system that's acquired cruft over a few years. If you don't care about it, then let me flip that around and ask why you care if people use XDG? The people who care about it are the people in the spaces that concern it.
  
  Off the top of my head this matters because:
  
  it's less clutter, especially if you're browsing your system from terminal
  
  it's a single, specified place for user specific configs, session cache, application assets, etc. Why wouldn't such important foundational things required for running apps not be in a well defined specification? Why just dump it gracelessly in the user's root folder outside of pure sloppy laziness?
  
  it makes uninstalling apps easier
  
  it makes maintenance easier
  
  it makes installing on new machines easier
  
  It’ll be in /home anyways and I heard BSD had some issues with something that could be XDG.
  
  🙄
  
  Someone asking a question doesnt merit the insult of saying they "would never ask if they used a terminal." I have no particular dog in this fight, but not being a dick isn't that hard.
  
  As to using this standard, just because this is your preferred standard, doesnt mean its the only standard.
  
  It may actually be the best now, but so were the 14 others that came before it. Your stated reasons are the same reasons as everyone agreeing to use any other standard. Consistency, predictability, automation,ease of backup/restore, etc.
  
  What sets this standard apart from all the rest? Based on their own description, they aren't even an official standard, just one in "very active" use.
  
  So why this, specifically? Just because its what you're already doing?
  
  Weird to me that you apparently think the only way of viewing files is in a terminal
- To give one example, what if someone wants to have more than one set of options for the same app? That's something I've needed before, and it's really hard to accomplish if the app always looks in one specific place for its options.
  
  Oh so it makes it impossible to change config path? Yea that's a bit inconvenient but you always can just make many files and replace the file in the right directory with the one you want.

122 comments