(Cc'ing the author of the specification in question: Waldo, could you clarify whether I'm interpreting it correctly?)
At the beginning of this thread, Sander Jansen <[email protected]> wrote: > For my music manager I need to store a sqlite3 database file somewhere > on disk. Which directory would be the most appropriate to use, the > XDG_CONFIG_HOME or the XDG_DATA_HOME directory? On Thu, 06 May 2010 at 09:28:42 -0500, Sander Jansen wrote: > The database is really > a hybrid between config and data, so I think I agree that a local /var > would be the best fit. I think I'm going to stick with XDG_CONFIG_HOME > for now. I'm pretty sure this isn't configuration (preferences). Deleting preferences is meant to return the app to an unconfigured state, but not destroy user-entered data like this: On Thu, 06 May 2010 at 09:28:42 -0500, Sander Jansen wrote: > In addition, users > may change the data in the database without writing it back to the tag > as well. so I'd put it in XDG_DATA_HOME, as Julien Danjou suggested. There seems to be some disagreement over what XDG_DATA_xxx is for, and in particular whether it's "like /usr/share", "like /var/lib", or something else entirely. My personal impression is it's a combination of "like /usr/share" and "like /var/lib" - the system-wide part is in /usr/share because it isn't edited, even by the system administrator, but the part in a user-specific directory can be changed by that user. The basedir document itself describes XDG_DATA_HOME as "a single base directory relative to which user-specific data files should be written". I think that sounds like a suitable place for databases... GNOME's interpretation of the XDG_foo directories is at <http://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/XDGConfigFolders>. It references <http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?207-modify-your-application-to-use-xdg-folders>, which focuses on defining what preferences and cache are, then considers everything else that's not an explicitly-saved document to be "data". KDE's interpretation is <http://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/XDG_Filesystem_Hierarchy>, which says > Data that applications store which are specific to a given user are > to be stored in the XDG_DATA_HOME directory [...] > Configuration information should be stored in the XDG_CONFIG_HOME directory The freedesktop.org trash specification (which sounds like a user-specific part of /var to me...) uses XDG_DATA_HOME, too. Regards, Simon _______________________________________________ xdg mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xdg
