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Dotfile madness

0x46.net

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Re: Dotfile madness

#221
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can change gnupg's home dir, but it would break a lot of currently functional setups if it just moved. You can just change the default: if .gnupg exists, write everything to it. If not, write to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gnupg/ and $XDG_DATA_HOME/gnupg/ as appropriate (deciding how to carry out the split is not obvious, but can be done). I agree, though, that calling it "shaming" is neither justified, nor useful.

> (deciding how to carry out the split is not obvious, but can be done). For this reason I like better the windows distinction, that (if I understand in correctly) distinguishes between machine-dependent files and machine independent files. for something like gnupg I would not really say what is data and what is configuration

It can be just as hard to say what should be local and what should be roaming.

Re: Dotfile madness

#222
post #120
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would honestly like to blacklist my home folder. Do you want to create a new file/folder? I am notified with a popup and if you ask to often I am gonna stop using that. Not really workable but one can still dream...

This is actually possible (on Linux, at least, probably Mac/Windows too) with something like selinux. It ends up being a huge headache though, both because selinux is kinda hard to configure, and because you will get a constant barrage of requests.

That sounds pretty funny, it reminds me of [UAP](https://blog.codinghorror.com/windows-vista-security-through...).

Re: Dotfile madness

#223

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…

That’s what the article talks about. How applications should use $XDG_DATA_HOME, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $XDG_CACHE_HOME and some defaults if they’re not set.

Re: Dotfile madness

#224

Related pet peeve: macOs '.DS_Store' files. Can someone better-informed than me please explain how to prevent heir creation? Barring that, I'd settle for a justification.

They store attributes used by the Finder for the they're within [0]. You can set a Mac to prevent their creation on mounted network volumes [1] but to my knowledge there isn't an option to prevent their creation on local volumes. For Samba shares, you can configure it to prevent their creation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209

[2] https://e-rave.nl/disable-creation-of-ds_store-files-on-samb...

Re: Dotfile madness

#225

Related pet peeve: macOs '.DS_Store' files. Can someone better-informed than me please explain how to prevent heir creation? Barring that, I'd settle for a justification.

How else do you propose storing xattrs on fat32?

Re: Dotfile madness

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s what the article talks about. How applications should use $XDG_DATA_HOME, $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $XDG_CACHE_HOME and some defaults if they’re not set.

I'm not seeing it. Where does XDG define when and how an app should use:

/home/user/Documents/

/home/user/Downloads/

/home/user/Pictures/

/home/user/Videos/

Let me know what I'm missing.

Re: Dotfile madness

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was thinking about that when tinkering with docker: why are volumes created outside the user's home directory by default ?

On my fedora ec2 created with a standard ami, docker doesn't work without sudo (didn't try to reconfigure, so it may if I hack), so that behavior is understandable, though not desirable.

Did you add your user to the docker group ?

Re: Dotfile madness

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is literally a folder in every Windows profile (Vista onwards) called "Saved Games", it should all go there.

^ This. And the amazing thing is it's probably the least common place for games to put save data. I think I've played exactly one game that ever used it.

Most likely because the proper API to get the path to that folder was vista-or-later and games preferred to be backward compatible

Re: Dotfile madness

#229

TIL I'm using ~ in the wrong way. For me ~ was always the default place for user-level configurations and time taught me to do so: .X* .bash* .vimrc and others. Than I create my personal folders ~/{src, docs, bin, porn, anime etc}. ~ is for temporary files I'll delete after use like windows users do with their Desktop folder. Also my ls isn't an alias with -a flag...I'm alone here? :|

I think an issue I have with it is if I want to move the configuration to another place, the only way I can do it is via a symlink. If applications used the variables above, you would be able to easily organize things differently if you choose to.

This would also allow you to test if something there is causing issues or if you wanted to format and reset things. Just delete that directory or set the variable to another path.

I don’t set ls to ls -a, but sometimes I create hidden folders and files on ~/ so it’s not distracting. Scanning through a lot of things because everything is dumped there is a mess.

Re: Dotfile madness

#230

Related pet peeve: macOs '.DS_Store' files. Can someone better-informed than me please explain how to prevent heir creation? Barring that, I'd settle for a justification.

Window size, folder view settings, icons locations etc is what I understand is store there.

No idea how to prevent them (except on networked folders.).

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