On another note can we talk about the amount of projects that just dump their co...

Macha · on Aug 6, 2020

Thankfully more and more projects are moving to respecting XDG_CONFIG_DIR:

The holdouts fall into the following categories:

1. Projects where the author doesn't care but would take a PR.

2. "My tool is super simple and I don't want to complicate it to read env vars or have platform specific config"

3. Projects which value cross platform consistency over consistency with the platform (tmux, though the next version does budge a little)

4. Projects which consider XDG as just "some desktop Linux thing" and don't consider themselves as caring about desktop that much or just that they predate XDG (SSH)

5. Projects who mix runtime and config and cached data in a single directory and don't want to split them out for proper XDG support.

The ArchWiki probably has the best centralised tracking of attempts to get XDG support implemented: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XDG_Base_Directory

PudgePacket · on Aug 6, 2020

6. Authors who haven't heard of XDG_CONFIG_DIR.

ironmagma · on Aug 6, 2020

I think it’s so that all the configs float to the top and get out of the way. Agree that it’s annoying though.

benrbray · on Aug 6, 2020

Do you mean the system-level config folder? Won't that cause problems when A) you rename / move a folder or B) copy a folder to a different computer?

marcosdumay · on Aug 6, 2020

Nope, he means the "new" LSB preferred directory for user-level configurations. "New" being quoted here because it's around a decade old already.

LukeShu · on Aug 6, 2020

Nit: ~/.config is specified by XDG, not by LSB.

But yeah, the most recent revision of the XDG basedir spec is dated November 2010; we've had it for a decade.