On Tue, 27 May 2008 23:12:55 +0200, thibaut bethune wrote: [...] > 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.
The spec says: "There is a single base directory relative to which user-specific data files should be written. This directory is defined by the environment variable $XDG_DATA_HOME." I think "user-specific data" is very confusing here. However, the default user (~/.local/share) and system (/usr/local/share/:/ usr/share/) paths indicate what it is really for. In other words, it is for things that could reasonably go in /usr/share. Or, for what would result if you did: $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local/ && make install > 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. 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). -- Dr Thomas Leonard http://rox.sourceforge.net GPG: 9242 9807 C985 3C07 44A6 8B9A AE07 8280 59A5 3CC1 _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
