Translation(s): none

The XDG Base Directory Specification (XDGBDS) defines five categories of so called DotFiles and the corresponding directories in a users home directory that should be used for those. The categories are cache, configuration, data, state and runtime files.

Please refer to the specification for directory definitions and further details. Debian does not require that packages conform to the XDGBDS but strongly encourages upstreams to do so. Debian packages should not be patched for conformance to avoid unnecessary deviation from upstream and other distributions.

Tools and libraries

Debian contains several libraries for different languages that help to implement the XDGBDS:

These tools or libraries exists but are not yet packaged:

Status of Packages

Debian does not require packages to conform to the XDGBDS and there is not (yet) a coordinated effort to encourage upstreams to do so. But to avoid duplication of effort we can collect upstream bug reports here regarding XDGBDS conformance.

A bigger list of bugs can be found in Arch Linux wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XDG_Base_Directory

Bugs not yet filled/found: mplayer

Some questions that might help to distinguish between the different classes:

DATA

CONFIG

STATE

CACHE

RUNTIME

sync across machines?

yes?

yes

no

no

no

manage in VCS (Git/SVN)?

no

yes

no

no

no

should be backed up?

yes

yes

yes

no

no

can live in tmpfs?

no

no

no

yes

yes?

contains much data?

yes

no

no

yes

no