[HN Gopher] $Home, Not So Sweet $Home
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$Home, Not So Sweet $Home
Author : delta_p_delta_x
Score : 26 points
Date : 2023-08-16 21:08 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gist.github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gist.github.com)
| psanford wrote:
| Yes, if you are writing new software please respect $XDG. But its
| a bit ridiculous to think that bash should respect some
| convention developed ~20 years after bash was released.
| LukeShu wrote:
| I mean, Emacs respects the convention, developed ~40 years
| after Emacs was first released.
| psanford wrote:
| I'm not saying the developers couldn't support it. I'm saying
| you are not entitled to name call them if they choose to not
| support it.
| lilyball wrote:
| There are countless tools that write to the bash files
| though, which is not true for most programs. Bash changing
| its locations would break all of these.
|
| Heck, git adopted ~/.config/git years ago, and yet just last
| week I ran across a tool that created and wrote to
| ~/.gitconfig instead of my ~/.config/git/config. If Bash
| tried to change then we'd be dealing with the fallout
| probably forever.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| >There are countless tools that write to the bash files
| though
|
| Which is terrible, btw. Configuration using untyped,
| unchecked files, readable & writeable by almost everything
| is one of the worst parts of Linux. Especially when it
| exists in a directory the user should expect to be their
| exclusive domain.
| tedunangst wrote:
| How is it not arrogant to say to an existing project "I hereby
| demand you move your config files to .config"?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| not adhering to a (reasonably well defined and accepted)
| standard kind of is a bug to me.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Resolved: the standard is for dot files to go in $HOME.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| When the large majority of developers converges and compromises
| to reach an agreed-upon standard, it _is_ arrogance to continue
| to stake it out by oneself, however old said existing project
| might be.
|
| Real-world equivalent: the imperial system of units dates to
| ancient Rome or older. The English used it throughout their
| empire. On the contrary, the SI units in their most modern form
| are barely a century old, and yet 95% of the Earth's population
| lives in a fully metricated country. Most metrication efforts
| happened in the last 50 - 70 years.
| devnullbrain wrote:
| Huh, who'd have thought it: you can make something sound
| arrogant by rewriting it to use arrogant language.
| [deleted]
| toast0 wrote:
| > Screw your conventions, we've always done it this way
|
| I don't understand this section heading. To me, software
| convention has the third meaning as shown on merriam webster[1]:
|
| > 3 d : an established technique, practice, or device (as in the
| theater)
|
| In that case, that we've always done it that way establishes the
| technique, and the established technique is the convention.
|
| To argue that non-desktop software should apply a desktop
| specification that they weren't involved in developing seems
| rather insane, especially since they are and have been following
| the established _convention_.
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/convention
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > To argue that non-desktop software should apply a desktop
| specification that they weren't involved in developing seems
| rather insane, especially since they are and have been
| following the established convention.
|
| So what, stuff changes over time - and it's not _that_ hard to
| migrate, either warn the user, or do the migration at first
| start. Good software should move with the times, not be
| perpetually frozen.
| maxique wrote:
| Archive link: https://archive.ph/pKW90
| [deleted]
| stonogo wrote:
| Before this, when I wanted to remove a program's detritus from my
| disk, I did rm -rf $HOME/.program
|
| After this, it's an easter egg hunt to guess what dot-directories
| got spammed.
|
| As far as I can tell, the XDG spec only benefits people who care
| really hard about how many hidden files are in $HOME. It
| definitely breaks behavior for people who DO want those per-app
| directories/files in $HOME, because the XDG spec does not mandate
| that the files created under e.g. .config/ are dotfiles
| themselves. So setting $XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME just creates non-
| hidden files in the home directory.
|
| At no point in this article is a technical justification made for
| this rigamarole, but this article goes to great lengths to accuse
| people against it of cowardice, ignorance, or arrogance. Just...
| why?
| neverrroot wrote:
| Make that $HOME
| JadeNB wrote:
| It's correct in the linked article; probably the title mangler
| got to it.
| zh3 wrote:
| I gave up on this fight some time ago; very interested to hear of
| better solutions than simply keeping a personal home elsewhere.
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(page generated 2023-08-16 23:00 UTC)