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

[Simon Ochsenreither]

Hi Benno,

> 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.

True.

> 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?

Most applications and libraries already made the move, but you might 
potentially see more directories on your system than on a freshly installed one 
as many applications keep using an existing .app where it exists even if the 
migrated to XDG. Git is a good example of this.

For pretty much every dotfile or dotfolder in the home directory there is a bug 
report by users who want to have it fixed in a future version. (And no bug 
reports by users who want XDG conformant applications to fill up their $HOME 
instead.)

On my recent Xubuntu system:

.atom:        https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/8281
.cabal:       https://github.com/haskell/cabal/issues/680
.cargo:       https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/1615
.eta:         https://github.com/typelead/eta/issues/169
.idris:       https://github.com/idris-lang/Idris-dev/pull/3456
.minecraft:   https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MCL-2563
.mozilla:     https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259356
.subversion:  https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SVN-4599
.thunderbird: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=735285
.pidgin:      https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/Roadmap3.0.0
...

I have fewer than 40 dotfiles/dotfolders left in my home directory, but more 
than 100 entries in .config, for example.
Apart from a few holdouts, XDG support is pretty much a done deal and what's 
left is cleaning up the long trail of the last 10% of applications. (Java 
applications seem to be particalularly notorious offenders in this regard ...)

There is an extremely helpful entry in the Arch Wiki that documents the state 
of the remaining cleanup:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XDG_Base_Directory_support

> 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.

Yes, agreed. As mentioned, my patch was just a first change to test the waters, 
a complete patch would adapt the location of all those files. It might not be 
perfect, but I could live with XDG_DATA_HOME for those files if nano devs 
insist on not splitting them up along the cache/config/data lines.

Thanks,

Simon