Re: Structure in $HOME

[Nils Pedersen <n p sun com>]

Hi Claes,

I read your email with interest on xdg-list. I have also followed the 
thread
that ensued on this list :)

I think in your proposal had a number of requirements that it wanted to 
solve:

1) clean up the current .files mess in $HOME
2) provide consistent locations/policies for:
  a) data/files (persistent and temporary)
  b) config info

I think those were the base requirements, but correct me if I missed
something.

Unixey file systems also tend to distinguish between host-specific,
platform-specific and platform-indpendent information. Let's say I
shared my home directory between a Debian machine and a Solaris
machine; I wouldn't want my versions of GNOME to trample on each
others config files, or worse still break. I think that was
discussed in the future thread

Also I would add a versioning requirement. Lets say I have GNOME 2.x
and 3.0 on the same machine. I would also expect things to run smoothly.
For example, running GNOME 2.x apps would respect the GNOME 3 theme :)

So I would add:

2c) (application) versioning of data/config
2d) host specific vrs platform independent data/config

Note: I haven't been able to think of a good reason why we would want to
specifically pull out platform-specific stuff in $HOME (e.g. Debian PPC
vrs X86) - compiler configs?

So, if we agree on the requirements, we can come up with a proposal that
even Seth would like (although I am doubtful :)). Of course, Havoc will
have already sorted this out in the next version of Gconf :).

Nils

Claes Holmerson wrote:

> (I post this also on kde-devel)
>
> Hi,
>
> I posted a mail to freedesktop.org (titled "Structure in $HOME") with
> a wish that KDE and Gnome would agree on a common directory structure
> for preferences and data in $HOME. You find it on this link, together
> with my arguments.
>
> https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/xdg-list/2003-January/001015.html
>
> I understand that this is a big change, but I also think it would be
> very valuable. I also hope that if Gnome and KDE agreed on something,
> other applications would follow (if the spec was good enough).
>
> Note that I do not suggest that KDE and Gnome would have to share
> actual preferences and data (even if that would be good), only that
> there should be separation between different kinds of data, in
> the same manner as there is a separation between /etc and /var and so on.
> This would give several benefits that I have described above.
>
> Even if this looks as large task, in the longer term, like two major
> versions away, it might be possible? It would be nice to hear
> opinions on this.
>
> Thanks, Claes
>
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