Re: VFS for legacy apps

["Nikolai Weibull" <now bitwi se>]

On 2/26/07, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-02-24 at 14:18 +0100, Nikolai Weibull wrote:
> > On 2/24/07, Hans Petter Jansson <hpj novell com> wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2007-02-23 at 10:56 +0100, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 2007-02-22 at 17:44 -0600, Hans Petter Jansson wrote:
> > >
> > > > > So I guess our default would be ~/.local/share/vfs/ ?
> > >
> > > > XDG_DATA_HOME is basically the user-specific version of /usr/share/. You
> > > > don't mount your stuff in /usr/share.
> > > >
> > > > Its not only weird, its a pretty bad idea. Eventually such a pathname
> > > > will show up in the ui (say in the file selector) and the user will
> > > > navigate to ~/.local/share which is supposed to be a hidden directory
> > > > for application data. (It contains things like user-specific
> > > > mime-application mappings and mime additions.)
> > >
> > > I agree with you, but I'd like to hear Nikolai's take on it too.
> >
> > I agree with both of you.
> >
> > Perhaps we need another variable in the specification mentioned, such
> > as XDG_MOUNT_HOME that defaults to ~/.local/mount or similar.
>
> I really think we should default to something directly in ~/ so that an
> "up" operation doesn't get you to some weird hidden place. However,
> honoring an env var sounds ok. (Of course, there is the risk that all
> apps won't be honoring the env var.)

Well, can't the location of the directory be hidden in the interface?
That is, provide a "Mounts" icon/location in the file dialogs /
nautilus and let "up" from there take you to ~/ whatever the actual
location of the directory may be.  And for the second concern, any
applications not honoring the environment variable would be considered
broken.

 nikolai