Re: [Nano-devel] proposal to add support for the XDG base directory spec

[Benno Schulenberg]

[When replying, please reply just to the list.]

Op  1-10-2017 om 21:20 schreef Simon Ochsenreither:
> I wrote/updated a patch to add XDG support and attached it to the old ticket 
> about the same topic: https://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?8523
>
> In very basic terms, this adds an additional place from which a user's nanorc 
> file is read.

In fact it adds two additional places where nano will look for a nanorc file:
XDG_CONFIG_HOME, and when not defined or non-existent: $HOME/.config.

> For those who are happy with the way things currently work – nothing changes.
> For those who want to have a cleaner home directory and easier backups – the 
> situation is somewhat improved.

If I look in my home directory on a recent Xubuntu system, there are still
several dot files and dot directories there: .bashrc, .emacs, .gitconfig,
.infokey, .profile, .toprc, .viminfo, .xinputrc, and .gnupg/, .mozilla/,
.shh/, .subversion/, .thunderbird/.  Do you see any of them moving their
stuff to .config or XDG_CONFIG_HOME?  If they don't, why should nano?

But more importantly: how does it help the user when the .nanorc file can be
put in a different directory but the .nano/*_history files remain where they
are?  That only makes things _more_ messy.

*If* we'll add support for the XDG base dir idea, then it will have to put all
three nano files in a single place: filepos_history, nanorc, and search_history.

(Your patch is not fully correct, by the way: when the home dir does not exist,
it should not go on to try and parse a nanorc file.)

Anyhow: anyone else who would like to see support for XDG_CONFIG_HOME added?

Benno