[fhs-discuss] Split home directory for each user into two parts

Karl Goetz karl at kgoetz.id.au
Sat May 7 00:06:06 PDT 2011


On Fri, 6 May 2011 09:18:40 +0100
Roger Leigh <rleigh at codelibre.net> wrote:

> On Fri, May 06, 2011 at 10:32:32AM +1000, Karl Goetz wrote:
> > On Thu, 5 May 2011 07:26:21 -0400
> > Randy Kramer <rhkramer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm just going to state this without very much support at first.
> > > I haven't looked in bugzilla to see if this is already there.
> > > 
> > > I think it would help lots of people (obviously, myself) if the ~ 
> > > directory for each user was split into two parts.  (This could be
> > > done in a variety of ways, more below.)
> > 
> > I can see the benefit of splitting out various classes of data (eg
> > config/state/cache), but I'm not sure what problem entirely new
> > directories are trying to solve that a few top level . dirs in homes
> > wouldn't solve?
> [...]
> > Freedesktop XDG people are moving lots of stuff in the home
> > directory around, including configs into .config, .local. perhaps
> > you should have a look at what they're doing there.
> 
> I was never entirely sure why .config was picked over a visible name,

I suspect because a lot of people don't like having lots of unnecessary
[visible] directories sitting and cluttering up their home directories.

> e.g. "etc".  Having installed a few packages with "--prefix=$HOME",
> I have a set of TLDs e.g. etc, bin, lib.  Replicating the TLDs makes
> some logical sense since configuration files are names consistently
> irrespective of the path, as well as additionally making life easier
> for the programmer (no special-casing needed for dotfiles).

OTOH, most people I know would find it bizarre and annoying to have an
'etc' in their home, as 'etc' has no relation to what they think should
be a config directory. That the system uses /etc/ isnt relevant to
them, they never interact with it directly.


[trim]

> As was noted in another post, the effort to move away from dotfiles
> in ~ to another location is a large task which will take a lot of
> time and effort.  However, despite this it is a worthy goal for
> security, consistency, keeping configuration in a VCS, and general
> usability (users can actually find the configuration files should
> they be unaware that dotfiles are hidden by default).  At the very

While I still disagree with a number of the visible directories the XDG
mandates, i've come to agree that .config is a useful thing.

> least the FHS could recommend the use of XDG via XDG_CONFIG_HOME
> to avoid further pollution of ~ with dotfiles, if it is not
> feasible to recommend a particular subdirectory for the storage of
> configuration files.

FHS referring to XDG for the contents of homes makes sense in my mind.
thanks,
kk

-- 
Karl Goetz, (Kamping_Kaiser / VK5FOSS)
Debian contributor / gNewSense Maintainer
http://www.kgoetz.id.au
No, I won't join your social networking group
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