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• XDGBaseDire...ecification

The XDG Base Directory Specification (XDGBDS) defines four directories in a users $HOME dir that should be used for so called DotFiles.

These directories (with their default locations) are:

• $XDG_DATA_HOME ($HOME/.local/share): data files
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME ($HOME/.config): configuration files
• $XDG_CACHE_HOME ($HOME/.cache): non-essential data files
• $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR (no default?): non-essential runtime files, other file objects (such as sockets, named pipes, ...)

Please refer to the specification for additional directory definitions and further details.

Tools

• src:libxdg-basedir

• src:haskell-xdg-basedir

• src:pyxdg

Status of Packages

TODO: Which packages do not conform to the XDGBDS and has a bug been filled upstream?

* mplayer: upstream bug * xmonad: upstream bug

e.g.: ZSH, gimp, ssh, gnupg, mplayer, dbus, libpurple/pidgin,

Links

• Modify your application to use XDG folders - Blog post from Lionel Dricot

• Fedora initiative to make packages conform to XDGBDS

• Gnome Goal to conform to XDGBDS

• KDE site on XDGBDS

Proposal: STATE directory

This is a recurring request/complaint (see this or this) on the xdg-freedesktop mailing list to introduce another directory for state information that does not belong in any of the existing categories (see also home-dir.proposal. Examples for this information are:

• history files of shells, repls, anything that uses libreadline
• logfiles
• state of application windows on exit
• recently opened file
• last time application was run

The above example information is not essential data. However it should still persist on reboots of the system unlike cache data that a user might consider putting in a TMPFS. On the other hand the data is rather volatile and does not make sense to be checked into a VCS. The files are also not the data files that an application works on.

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