I'm working on a response to Steve's recent response, but I'll try to
address this first. (I've drafted a response, but I want to sleep on
it before sending.)
On Sunday 26 June 2011 10:15:45 am Don Armstrong wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Jun 2011, Trans wrote:
> > What migration issues?
>
> Every single configuration-reading program will have to read user
> configuration in two different places, move existing configuration
> files so that it is clear to users which configuration file will take
> precedence, and then at some point in the future, stop reading
> configuration files in the old location.
>
> Complicate this by the fact that many people keep their home
> directories in version control systems[1] and otherwise modify
> existing behavior, and that for some of these programs, the
> configuration can lead to inaccessible or nearly unusable systems.
>
> I would imagine that we're talking about at least an hours worth of
> work for every single program, with some serious additional design
> work on top to deal with other problems which I haven't foreseen in
> the brief period I spent writing this mail. All for little benefit.
I would think we can do better than that.
First of all, initially, no program has to change. And, until any one
program changes, no changes have to be made to the system.
An early step in a migration path could be for distros to define
environmental variables (or symlinks, or something along those lines)
for the following:
* $XDG_DATA_HOME
* $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
* $XDG_DATA_DIRS
* $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
* $XDG_CACHE_HOME
* $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
* for xdg-user-dirs, do something similar for the following:
typedef enum {
G_USER_DIRECTORY_DESKTOP,
G_USER_DIRECTORY_DOCUMENTS,
G_USER_DIRECTORY_DOWNLOAD,
G_USER_DIRECTORY_MUSIC,
G_USER_DIRECTORY_PICTURES,
G_USER_DIRECTORY_PUBLIC_SHARE,
G_USER_DIRECTORY_TEMPLATES,
G_USER_DIRECTORY_VIDEOS,
G_USER_N_DIRECTORIES
} GUserDirectory;
If distros don't want to do that, or until they do, an install script
could be written to do that, for use only by users who are interested
in making use of the XDG specifications.
When those environment variables / symlinks are defined in a distro,
initially all of them could be set to the user's ~. (That's without
any thought--maybe there are better existing locations for some of
those to point to.)
When some application developer or maintainer is willing to make a
change to support the future approach, they have two choices:
* (not recommended) they change their application to read
configuration data from either of two places, either from ~ or (for
configuration data) from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME or from
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/<somedir> (whichever is appropriate)
<or>
* (recommended) they change their application to read configuration
data from a new ($XDG) location only, point out the need to setup
environment variables or symlinks for those locations, and (optionally)
distribute the install script that I mention above.
In some sense, the migration is complete at that point. (That may be
stretching a point, but maybe not.)
If programs have been written (or revised) to read from either of two
locations (the not recommended approach), at some point, many years
from now, they might be re-written again to read from only the new
locations.
Randy Kramer
PS:
<minor(?) rant>
Should I rant? Probably not--maybe I'll be smart enough to delete this
before I send it.
One thing that annoys me about Linux is that--how to phrase it--in a
variety of ways it is not user supportive. Look at how well the
filesystem (as now being documented) is setup to make life good for
people like administrators. Places to put binaries for different
purposes (/bin, /sbin, /user/bin, ...), well-defined places to put
programs packaged by the distro, optional programs not installed by
packages from the distro, well defined areas for documentation, a place
for boot files, a place for system wide configuration files, ...
Then, what does Linux do for the user--Linux gives him one directory
(hierarchy) /home/<user> and dumps every kind of user related file into
that one directory, hiding some of it. I don't want my system
organized like that, and Linux is capable of supporting me in the way I
want to organize my system. But some additional built-in flexibility
would be helpful.
</minor(?) rant>
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