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Dotfile madness

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Re: Dotfile madness

#171

Post by toss1 »

Indeed!!

Some of us would like to manage our systems, and processes like backups, transfer to a new system, etc., in something resembling an orderly process.

The very concept that architects, designers, &/or programmers think it's OK to just litter our systems with their stuff wherever happens to be convenient to them to code up this afternoon is no better than people just deciding to crap wherever they feel. When I see software doing this, I automatically downgrade them in my assessment of what I want to use going forward.

The simple concept is that there are a few categories of storage used -- these should each be kept separate & independent, under the USER's control.

Why is this a difficult concept?

Program code, system-config, per-user-config, user data. A simple table of the default and user-overridden location for each.

If you as a coder have a problem with this, I really have to wonder what other complexity you will handle badly.

If this simple system is a mess, why would I expect other parts of your system to be any good?

Re: Dotfile madness

#172

Post by joshvm »

franky47 wrote: post #34
Jaruzel wrote: post #2

This isn't just a Linux problem. In Windows, the users /documents folder is polluted in exactly the same way these days.

Also on macOS, where [~]/Library/ApplicationSupport is the designed and recommended place to store config files, logs, preferences and all kinds of persistent data, the home directory still gets cluttered. It's a laziness issue, it won't be solved solely by making is easier to access the right locations on each system/platform, but that would be a step in the right direction.

Windows also has an app data folder that contains a whole mishmash of stuff. And of course you have the registry.

Part of the problem in Windows is that Program Files is write protected for security, so you can't store a local configuration file relative to the exe. So where does it go?

I assume there must be documentation from Microsoft and Apple about best practices for this... I hope?

To answer your last question: in Qt you can use QSettings and it'll write to a canonical platform-specific location. Useful for storing eg the last accessed folder in a GUI, or things which users don't reallty need to change regularly.

Re: Dotfile madness

#173

Post by yesco »

quotemstr wrote: post #155

I have the opposite perspective. Dotfiles are fine, and I find the proliferation of XDG directories confusing, mostly because they're misused. Why should a game's save files be under .config? Making dotfiles under $HOME is a simple approach that's worked for a long time and that doesn't cause serious problems, and I see no need to adopt the XDG approach, which I see as overengineered.

> I find the proliferation of XDG directories confusing, mostly because they're misused. Why should a game's save files be under .config?

A game's save should be $XDG_DATA_HOME, misuse is exactly that, misuse. I have hundreds of games installed on my linux machine and not a single one has put it's save files into my $XDG_CONFIG_HOME folder. On the other hand many DO outright ignore XDG and dump all their garbage into .game_name/.dev_name folders (looking at you Factorio). I think you are exaggerating the issue.

> Making dotfiles under $HOME is a simple approach that's worked for a long time and that doesn't cause serious problems, and I see no need to adopt the XDG approach, which I see as overengineered.

What exactly is over engineered here? It's just a set of environmental variables, developers ALREADY use $HOME to spam up my home directory. The only real effort a developer needs to put into this is making sure they separate their config, data and cache folders which is something most already do within their cute .program_name folders.

while maybe not "serious" I certainly do find it do be quite the problem that all user-specific program data is randomly dumped into poorly named hidden folders within my home directory. *Nix systems at a root level already divide config files into /etc, cached files into /var and /tmp, and data files into /usr. Why can't there be at least a little symmetry with how the home folder is handled?

Re: Dotfile madness

#174

Post by nine_k »

darkpuma wrote: post #165
nine_k wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A general tagging mechanism, reasonably supported across filesystems , would be great to have. Not only for media collections. It's not easy to implement nicely, though.

Associating tags with files is straight forward. What's not quite so straight forward is how you query the system. The worst implementations of file tagging only implement retrieving a list of all files that have a given tag. Slightly better than this are tagging systems that will return the intersection between two or more tags. Most tag systems never go beyond this. Going slightly further, tag exclusions are powerf…

I very much agree.

This would require a ton of difference from how modern desktop and mobile OSes handle files / documents. Maybe some time later, some research OS would implement it.

Re: Dotfile madness

#175

Post by darkpuma »

sneak wrote: post #80
nine_k wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding an interface to access the tag store won't be very hard. It would be harder to make it so that all the tag-oblivious programs, like mv or vi, to say nothing of rsync, would preserve the attributes when moving or modifying a file.

Sidecar files might work, and would also be filesystem-portable.

Sidecar files for storing file tags make querying the tag system a huge chore; it totally kills performance. I understand the conceptual appeal but it's just not the way to go.

Re: Dotfile madness

#176

Post by avip »

Jaruzel wrote: post #2

This isn't just a Linux problem. In Windows, the users /documents folder is polluted in exactly the same way these days.

Respectful Windows apps should drop their leftovers under %UserProfile%\Application Data or %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application Data.

Re: Dotfile madness

#177

Post by bo1024 »

sowbug wrote: post #74
bauerd wrote: post #21

I don't get the problem. Why bother where dotfiles are written to? GUI file managers and userland tools hide them by default. What would I gain by having them written outside of $HOME?

It avoids the realization that you have been paying AWS to back up ~/.cache and ~/.local for the last 6 months.

The article says the standard is to put data in ~/.local/share/

So I guess if any of your applications have important data, you better back it up! (I learned today)

Re: Dotfile madness

#178

Post by __david__ »

reaperducer wrote: post #37
saagarjha wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a convenient place to store user data that works across platforms.

It’s a LAZY place to store user data that works across platforms. FTFY. If you don’t want to follow the spec, keep your program’s data in your program’s directory. If another program needs the data it can follow the $PATH, or ask the user. Even better, ask the user at first run. You know, when asking people to accept some Byzantine EULA, license, and permission to track their grandmother.

Your program is installed in /usr/bin—you can't write to that directory (nor should you).

Re: Dotfile madness

#179

Post by featherrust »

amelius wrote: post #169
nycticorax wrote: post #119

To me, the real problem is not the dotfiles, but the regular (i.e. non-hidden) files that applications surreptitiously create in my home folder. (Which the author does mention as being particularly bad.) dotfiles in the home folder are not a new thing on Linux (e.g. .bashrc, .profile, .emacs, etc.), even if it would be better if more applications used the XDG folders. And if I don't see them when I "ls", they don't b…

Suggestion. Just do: mkdir ~/real_home And use that as your real home :)

You're not my real dad!

Re: Dotfile madness

#180

Post by themodelplumber »

nycticorax wrote: post #119

To me, the real problem is not the dotfiles, but the regular (i.e. non-hidden) files that applications surreptitiously create in my home folder. (Which the author does mention as being particularly bad.) dotfiles in the home folder are not a new thing on Linux (e.g. .bashrc, .profile, .emacs, etc.), even if it would be better if more applications used the XDG folders. And if I don't see them when I "ls", they don't b…

I have a slightly different pet peeve. I don't like applications that default to saving files to my home folder. I wish they would look for e.g. /home/user/Documents or whatever else seems appropriate and even semi-standardized given the type of file.

But just dropping stuff in my home directory--look, if I'm in a hurry and my defenses are down, you basically just encouraged me to clutter things up.

The last software I found that does this is a "download helper"...even though I have a Downloads folder that my distro already set up, that Chrome and Firefox know to use, this download helper thinks I want those downloads dumped in my home folder. I hope some generous person changes this behavior, meanwhile I forgot to charge it manually for the last batch and I have a bunch of cleanup to do.

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