[lsb-discuss] Packaging

[Bastian, Waldo]

Both Gnome and KDE provide guidelines in this area. Gnome encourages the
use of Gconf while KDE defines a hierarchy under ~/.kde with
~/.kde/share/config reserved for configuration files.

The XDG Base Directory [1] layout reserves ~/.local as a user-only
alternative to /usr/local and ~/.config as starting points for
configuration entries and a user-only alternative to similar information
under /etc/xdg. It would be a welcome addition to have additional
guidelines for how applications should make use of the ~/.config
directory. For now I think it's usage should be restricted to usage
directed by interoperable specifications (there is no interoperable
specification for generic "configuration files" and e.g. Gconf, KDE's
KConfig and OO.o's storage methods are all very different), but there is
a lot of interest from application developers to use it for generic
purposes as well. Some additional guidelines for them based on the
existing XDG base Directory spec would be very useful in my opinion.

[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards_2fbasedir_2dspec

Waldo Bastian
Linux Client Architect - Client Linux Foundation Technology
Channel Platform Solutions Group
Intel Corporation - http://www.intel.com/opensource
OSDL DTL Tech Board Chairman

>-----Original Message-----
>From: lsb-discuss-bounces at lists.freestandards.org [mailto:lsb-discuss-
>bounces at lists.freestandards.org] On Behalf Of Chris Lee
>Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 7:44 AM
>To: lsb-discuss at lists.freestandards.org
>Subject: Re: [lsb-discuss] Packaging
>
>Mike Sweet wrote:
>> 2. Where do we put user installs?
>>
>> Mike Sweet: A subdirectory off the user's home directory, e.g.
>> "~/.apps" or "~/.root".
>>
>
>If this is defined can "~/.etc"  or "~/config" for all user
>configuration files also be defined.
>My users can never understand why they have so many files when they
>switch on show hidden files (ok, I should stop them, but sometimes they
>can fix things without me if I do not).
>They run into this because as it stands all software just uses the root
>of their home to dump stuff, sometimes even not hidden.
>If there was a location defined I think even the distros and projects
>would start to use it.
>Some sort of definition would make the users life far easier, and limit
>the amount applications can spread over a users home directory.
>
>Regards,
>
>Chris.
>
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