This topic has been discussed a few times on the XDG mailing list due to peoples' different interpretations. Perhaps the best scenario would be for an updated spec to remove ambiguity.
Until that happens, previous discussions on the XDG mailing list indicate that XDG_DATA_HOME was intended as a user-writable version of /usr/share so users can override icons, themes, etc. that are in /usr/share. Following that parallel, in general you wouldn't want applications writing to XDG_DATA_HOME any more than to /usr/share. (There are exceptions, as ~/.local/Trash shows.) Here are some previous XDG discussions of XDG_DATA_HOME that shed light: Thomas Leonard @ http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2003-July/000195.html Ideally, DATA should only be written to when installing software. The user should only have to backup CONFIG. Or at least, that was my impression. The spec doesn't actually say what they're for ;-) David Faure @ http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2008-July/009748.html Everything I find in my ~/.local/share is really either a local equivalent of /usr/share stuff, or something that is really user data only with no system-wide equivalent. ~/.local/share/applications has desktop files, ~/.local/share/mime has mimetypes (like /usr/share/mime), etc. Mark McLoughlin @ http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2005-May/005315.html My take on this would be that editors shouldn't be editing .desktop files by making a copy with the same file ID and putting them in ~/.local/share/applications. $XDG_DATA_HOME, AFAICT, is for application data, not user configuration files. To show a concrete problem with doing it this way, if you installed a vim package in your home directory, you'd expect the package to install vim.desktop in ~/.local/share/applications, overriding the user's changes. Thomas Leonard @ http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/2008-June/009678.html says: > But Transmission developer (Charles at > http://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/684 ) has understood (concerning > files in $HOME/.transmission/torrents/ ) that "the intention of > XDG_DATA_HOME vs XDG_CONFIG_HOME is that the former should only be > written to when installing software. That way the directory is > relatively constant, which makes backups easier for system > administrators. Correct. > By contrast, XDG_CONFIG_HOME is where all the > frequently-changed or short-term files go. Given the short-term nature > of .torrent files, IMO they're a better fit for XDG_CONFIG_HOME. They > *definitely* aren't files written once when installing software." Some of these should probably go in $XDG_CACHE_HOME instead (things that could be downloaded again easily, for example). -- Transmission should use XDG_DATA_HOME and XDG_CACHE_HOME for non-config user files https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/466541 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
