Reading that article (Cleaning user preferences, keeping user data) from Ploum at http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?184-cleaning-user-preferences-keeping-user-data, i've discovered basedir-spec (see comment 8 below the article).
I thought that $XDG_CONFIG_HOME was for configuration files and that $XDG_DATA_HOME was for data. For instance, in the particular case of Transmission (a BitTorrent client http://www.transmissionbt.com/ ) which creates several folders in home directory : * $HOME/.transmission/cache/ * $HOME/.transmission/gtk/ * $HOME/.transmission/torrents/ * $HOME/.transmission/stats.bench and where $HOME/.transmission/torrents/ has information about files currently downloaded, i thought these informations were date that should be in $XDG_DATA_HOME. But Transmission developer (Charle 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. 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." It seems that specs are not 100% clear about that and developers can't easily change their program to match these specs since it's hard to know which file must go in $XDG_DATA_HOME and which files must go $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=523057 ans specially http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=518585#c3, http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=522848#c1 & http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=523174#c3 1°) Could you help us concerning transmission and files in $HOME/.transmission/torrents/ ? 2°) Maybe specs could be more precise or could have some exemples about which files are supposed to go to $XDG_DATA_HOME and which filesare supposed to go to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME ? Thanks ! _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
