this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024

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submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 117 points 3 months ago (20 children)

Golang puts shit specifically in $HOME/go. Not even .go. Just plain go.

Why is it so difficult to follow industry standards

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Here is a more concise way to achieve the same thing:

ls -ACd ~/.??*/ | sed -e "s#$HOME/##g"

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

This would just further complicate things for me. It assumes that 1) the system even has a windowing system/desktop environment or 2) all the installed software is XDG-aware. Most of the time I’m fiddling with headless environments.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago

So yes, "XDG" stands for "Cross-Desktop Group" - but I don't agree that using the spec assumes a windowing system. The base directory spec involves checking for certain environment variables for guidance on where to put files, and falling back to certain defaults if those variables are not set. It works fine on headless systems, and on systems that are not XDG-aware (I suppose that means systems that don't set the relevant env vars).

OTOH as another commenter pointed out the base directory spec can make software work when it otherwise wouldn't on a system that doesn't have a typical home directory layout or permissions.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's not too hard to check for XDG support first and use a few hardcoded directory paths if that is unavailable.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago

I didn't know about this (and thankfully, haven't written anything public). I've been trying to fix an install script for an OSS project that doesn't work on immutable distros, and using the XDG Base Directory specs might just be the panacea I was looking for!

[–] [email protected] 51 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I wish they used them all, especially XDG_CACHE_HOME which can become pretty big pretty fast.

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[+] [email protected] -20 points 3 months ago (5 children)

But what's the difference? It'll be in /home anyways and I heard BSD had some issues with something that could be XDG.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

To give one example, what if someone wants to have more than one set of options for the same app? That's something I've needed before, and it's really hard to accomplish if the app always looks in one specific place for its options.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Oh so it makes it impossible to change config path? Yea that's a bit inconvenient but you always can just make many files and replace the file in the right directory with the one you want.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

But what’s the difference?

I can only imagine someone asking this if they a) don't use the terminal except if Stackexchange says they should and b) have yet to try and cleanup a system that's acquired cruft over a few years. If you don't care about it, then let me flip that around and ask why you care if people use XDG? The people who care about it are the people in the spaces that concern it.

Off the top of my head this matters because:

it's less clutter, especially if you're browsing your system from terminal
it's a single, specified place for user specific configs, session cache, application assets, etc. Why wouldn't such important foundational things required for running apps not be in a well defined specification? Why just dump it gracelessly in the user's root folder outside of pure sloppy laziness?
it makes uninstalling apps easier
it makes maintenance easier
it makes installing on new machines easier

It’ll be in /home anyways and I heard BSD had some issues with something that could be XDG.

🙄

[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Weird to me that you apparently think the only way of viewing files is in a terminal

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

It's weird to me that you think I think that. I do primarily browse files by terminal, but not always. Before I got into heavy terminal use I was a power user of Nemo. In any case, dumping everything in /home does not make for a better gui file browsing experience, either

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Someone asking a question doesnt merit the insult of saying they "would never ask if they used a terminal." I have no particular dog in this fight, but not being a dick isn't that hard.

As to using this standard, just because this is your preferred standard, doesnt mean its the only standard.

It may actually be the best now, but so were the 14 others that came before it. Your stated reasons are the same reasons as everyone agreeing to use any other standard. Consistency, predictability, automation,ease of backup/restore, etc.

What sets this standard apart from all the rest? Based on their own description, they aren't even an official standard, just one in "very active" use.

So why this, specifically? Just because its what you're already doing?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Someone asking a question doesnt merit the insult of saying they “would never ask if they used a terminal.” I have no particular dog in this fight, but not being a dick isn’t that hard.

This is true, and something that I'm working on. For some reason my brain is uncharitable in these situations and I interpret it not as a simple question but a sarcastically hostile put down in the form of a question. In this case, "Why would you be dumb and not just put things in /home". That really is a silly interpretation of the OP question, so I apologize.

As to using this standard, just because this is your preferred standard, doesnt mean its the only standard.

Sure, but the OP was essentially asking "Why isn't dumping everything into a user's /home the standard? Why are you advocating for something different?"

Based on their own description, they aren’t even an official standard, just one in “very active” use.

There are a LOT of "unofficial standards" that are very impactful. System D can be considered among those. The page you link to does talk about a lot of specifications, but it also says that a lot of them are already under the XDG specification or the reason for XDG is to bring such a scheme under a single specification, i.e. XDG.

So why this, specifically? Just because its what you’re already doing?

yes I do use it, so I am definitely biased in that regard
it bring a bunch of disparate mostly abandoned specification into a single, active one
it's the active specification that has learned from past attempts

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (8 children)

Because, like /etc, you know there is a designated place for config files. It's already set for you right there, and there is a standard for it.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

/etc is a standard, defined in the filesystem hierarchy standard. This is not:

freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, but we are not an official standards body. There is no requirement for projects to implement all of these specifications, nor certification.

Below are some of the specifications we have produced, many under the banner of 'XDG', which stands for the Cross-Desktop Group.

Its nit-picking, but this is a specification, i.e a preference, not an official standard. It would be great if everyone would agree on just one of these to use, but that isn't a foregone conclusion. Even the actual standard, the FHS, isn't followed by popular OS's like NixOS.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Specification, WHATEVER 🙄

The point is it exists for a reason, and clear purpose.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago

For me personally I just hate that I do not know where to find configs, especially when using a dotfiles repo, it becomes harder than if they're all available under a common path.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago

Better organization and backup / restore. For example if you want to restore config files but don't want to move over the large ".local" folder, applications that write to $HOME will create diifculty.

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