Dotfiles matter! Please stop dumping files in users’ $HOME directories.

dotfiles-matter.click

Programming @programming.dev

Dotfiles matter

dotfiles-matter.click

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134 comments

XDG gang, rise up!
Also, I know that this community and dot-files in general are Unix based, but this holds true for Windows development as well. You should be putting app files in the users' %APPDATA% directory, not their user folder. It's probably even more important since Windows doesn't autohide dot files.
- The My Documents / Documents folder on Windows is a dumping ground for game saves and random applications. I no longer use it for saving my documents anymore…
  
  Yep, my ~/Projects folder is where I keep anything I need to actually find. All the normal places are full of random cruft.
  
  I don't touch it either for two reasons that go together.
  It's a pig sty before I even get there.
  Nothing in there will ever be included in backups for that reason.
  My cloud drive has SO much random flstudio crap in it. That's the worst program in the world when it comes to that. If you install their program they think they own your hard drive.
  Also while I'm bitching about windows folders, why did they make it so weird to get to your home folder? It feels like we aren't supposed to know it exists anymore.
  
  To be honest, pretty much all my files that actually matter are under my Dropbox folder. Everything else is ephemeral. I mostly depend on Steam or the likes to backup game saves. Not much else I care about. I've upgraded my PC a few times (with no full backups) and never missed a single thing that got lost in the upgrade.
- One of my proudest accomplishments is contributing to the XDG Base Dir spec. I fixed a typo.
  
  Which one?
- Unfortunately not even Microsoft does that... On windows having a logical order is a lost battle

I just write my config files directly to random unused blocks on /dev/sda, filesystems are overrated.
- You still have sd devices? /s
  
  You still have devices?
  I'm over here chilling with my a
  Rental flat, where I can't make any modifications or else I'll be evicted.
  Free TV that serves me ads, on the condition I don't tamper with it.
  Leased car with a heated seat subscription.
  Vendor-locked iPhone that came with my mobile plan.
  Netflix subscription that still shows me ads.
  I'd say the only thing I own is the clothes on my back, but those were repossessed yesterday for nonpayment.
  /s
- Nah, dump em' to /tmp/ and let the user figure out the rest
  
  I just leave all config in memory. If the user really cared, they would never reboot.
  
  /dev/null
- A filesystem is just writing to random unused blocks with extra steps.

I absolutely despise the following directories: Documents, Music, Pictures, Public, Templates, Videos. Why? Because applications randomly dump stuff into these directories and fill them with junk files. I don't want any application putting anything into directories I actually use, unless I explicitly tell them to. It is not possible to keep your files organized if applications randomly dump trash files into them.
- Same shit happens on Windows. Games will just install their shit literally all over OS with no rhyme or reason to it.
  Why can't the save game and config.ini just be in the main god damn game directory? Nobody knows.
  
  Actual reason is system permissions.
  Most the default installation path is Program Files. That needs elevation to write to. Fine when you’re installing something, but not something you want to need just to run the game.
  Writing to %APPDATA% or really anywhere in %USERHOME% is guaranteed to have the right permissions for this user.
  Granted, a lot of home PCs and gaming PCs are single-user environments. The “personal” computer. In that case there’s no reason games and applications can’t be installed in %LOCALAPPADATA%, and in fact, I think windows has an environment variable or registry setting for that.
  It’s no different in Linux. You don’t want users writing to /etc. And you may expect multiple users. So all of that stuff goes to dot files in $HOME.
  
  Microsoft OWNS not just gaming companies, but one of the largest gaming hardware companies and many of the largest game developers.
  You'd think by now we'd get a dedicated Saves folder to organize this shit after this long.
  
  I have my own directories on windows. I never use system provided directories for my own stuff, it always sucks. And if I want to move directories between drives or just change permissions, all hell breaks loose because everything depends on the default locations... So I just leave them be if I can.
  
  They're probably trying to handle per user config. But nowadays, there's mostly only one user using a machine.
- I just keep my stuff far away from $HOME and not bother about the junk. Not even a subdirectory under $HOME.
  Same goes for ' My documents' on windows.
- This is why I've made a "Filing Cabinet" directory. My stuff goes in there nice and organized, while I ignore the rest.
- These places are a cesspool of junk in every system, it's incredible. MacOS has this kind of shit too, just like Windows, with apps dumping crap there without a care.

Y'know what's worse? When there's no dot. Worse than that, it's an undotted directory used to store a single config file. Ugh, unpleasant memories. 😒
- ~/go is one of my major pet peeves.
  
  That's not the only folder go creates. There's also ~/sdks/go1.xy
  
  That's just the default location for what it's worth. You can move GOPATH wherever you want.
- There's a version control system called darcs that stores its configuration files in a _darcs/ directory in your project and it wounds my soul.

If you care, please take time to upvote or file bugs on packages that don't follow XDG. Or even better, make PRs.
- Those bugs and PRs would just get closed without comment. Nobody is going to move a dotfile as a breaking change in any established software. You either get it right the first time or probably never.
  
  The software can read from both locations in a backwards compatible way. Many tools already do this.
  
  Nobody is going to move a dotfile as a breaking change in any established software
  We have oodles of counterexamples to this. GIMP did it, Blender did it, DOSBox did it, Libreoffice did it, Skype did it, Wireshark did it, ad nauseum. It's not really as big a deal as you make it to be (or a big deal at all). You have a transitional period where you look for config files in both locations, and mark the old location as obsolete.
  
  They will if enough people whine about it.
  In the old days (I'm 50+) tumbleweed drifted through ~/ apart from my drivel and I'd have a folder for that so /home/gerdesj/docs was the root of my stuff. I also had ~/tmp/ for not important stuff. I don't have too much imagination and ~/ was pretty clean. I was aware of dot files and there were a shit load of them but I didn't see them unless I wanted to.
  This really isn't the most important issue ever but it would be nice if apps dumped their shit in a consistently logical way. XDG is the standard.
  
  I know developers are busy, and I don't mean to berate them for their choices or work. I only have a two year Computer Information Systems degree and haven't programmed a lot for a while, but supporting the XDG specification and remaining backwards compatible doesn't seem to be very difficult or would cause so much breakage (of course, the amount of work would depend on the software and how the hardcoded path is implemented). I look up git repository issues for the software and tend to find ubiquitous examples like vim to be resistant to such change: https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/2034
  This is really frustrating and leads me to find alternative software, such as neovim/doom emacs instead of vim, nushell instead of bash, etc., just to be able to clear up my home directory. I don't mind if I have to wait for XDG to be supported, but many important projects just label the issue as "won't fix". I totally understand where you are coming from.
  List of software with hardcoded paths at this time: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory#Hardcoded
  
  I've made about 5 MRs changing dotfile locations, and not once has it ever been declined
  
  You can add the proper location to the list of possible dirs. Fhen you can movd your dotfile
- A (very well used) program I use places files in $HOME. Someone argued for changing to $XDG_CONFIG or at least add that as an option. The dev, being used to the old school way, gave the exact opposite reason: that .config was just an extra level of organization when dotfiles are what the home dir is for. So I'm not sure how successful you would be with that approach.
  To be clear, I am clearly on the side of XDG, myself.
- XDG is a Red Hat thing.
  Stuff outside of their influence is unlikely to change, like OpenSSH or ZSH.
  
  Old things like that get a pass. New tools and frameworks should definitely obey the standards.

One of my greatest pet peeves is random folders appearing in my home folder. Thanks for this
- Let's count them. (not including legacy or standard locations like .local, .config, or .cache, .ssh, and shell configuration files
  .aws
  .azure
  .bun
  .byobu
  .cargo
  .dbus
  .docker
  .dokku
  .keychain
  .kube
  .minikube
  .motd_shown
  .node_repl_history
  .npm
  .nuxt
  .nuxtrc
  .nvm
  .oh-my-zsh
  .pack
  .psql_history
  .pyenv
  .python_history
  .redhat
  .ruff_cache
  .rustup
  .selected_editor
  .sqlite_history
  .sudo_as_admin_successful
  .tmux.conf
  .tox
  .ts_node_repl_history
  .vim
  .viminfo
  .vimrc
  .vscode-server
  .wget-hsts
  .yarn
  And a couple more, non-hidden files for Go.
  go
  sdk/go1.20
  
  i can almost ignore the hidden ones, but ~/go? no thats just rude
  
  Why aren't all of these just normal directories under either .local (for data files) or .config (for configuration)???
  Actually, I think the XDG directories should be under a single XDG directory either dotted or not (a better name would be OK with me) ~/xdg/Documents, ~/xdg/Music, ~/xdg/Pictures etc.
  
  afaik, tmux can use ~/.config/tmux/tmux.conf or something, if ~/.tmux is not found
  
  If these were links to issues that could be reacted to, I'd totally do that.
  
  Is it a problem to change this?

The rust library mentioned there doesn’t support system install paths for windows or macOS, it only uses XDG. I recommend the directories crate which properly supports Linux, Mac, and Windows.
https://github.com/dirs-dev/directories-rs
- Same with Python. I use a combination of the platformdirs and xdg libraries.
- Thanks I was going to look for one with multi OS support :)

You might wanna backup your dotfiles somewhere remote too. I literally lost dotfiles that I'd been building up for years because I couldn't remember the password to my Linux machine after coming back from vacation. Funny enough though, a couple hours after nuking my OS I magically remember my password.
- Unless you disk was encrypted, you could have booted up a live distro and back up the files you needed (or even overwrite the shadow file to get a new password)
  
  And maybe could still get them with testdisk 😁
  
  In the late 90s I taught an intro course for folks who wanted to run *nix boxen (Solaris, IIRC). On the afternoon of the last day I had them swap places after lunch and gain root access to each others' machines. It was partly for root passwd recovery and other maintenance tasks, but also to demonstrate that physical access to the box was a serious issue.
- After two years of typing in the same boot pass on my same laptop at my same job I woke up one day and couldn't remember it. Almost died trying. Right as I was reaching out to my admin it came to me.
- Put your dotfiles in git (or source control of your choice)- massages it easier to propagate improvements across machines!
- Oof. Yeah, I once forgot my LastPass password literally less than 30 seconds after entering it on another device. Muscle memory versus active memory kind of thing.

Me staring aggressively at Steam, Zotero, and bash:
(And more)
- To be fair, bash was released a decade before the XDG specs.
  
  Ah true. Bash doesn't bug me as much as Zotero cause at least it's a .bashrc file. With Zotero it's a whole folder! In $HOME! Absolute madness!
- You aren't using the Steam flatpak?
  
  I'm using the Snap Flatpack of Steam, but I'm thinking of wrapping that in an AppImage because screw all of these idiot distribution walled gardens.

And wtf is with anaconda3 just permanently changing your "user@machine" terminal prompt?? Who thought that was a good idea?
- As someone who uses anaconda, it's quite useful to know what environment I'm in, but I definitely don't have it enabled by default.

My $HOME is my castle (・へ・)
- @Blizzard @AmericanJesus lol love that

Tangentially related: I recently learned that there are tools for handling dotfiles such as chezmoi and yadm. I would suppose that after spending some time on backing up the dotfiles that matter one can purge the remainders without much issue. I also remember some tool that was made for the purpose of cleaning $HOME, but can not recall its name (if anyone knows please let me know).
- xdg-ninja maybe?
  https://github.com/b3nj5m1n/xdg-ninja#xdg-ninja
  
  Yes, that is the one. Thanks!

I hate it when an application puts its configuration data in its own dotfile under $HOME instead in ~/.config. Also hate it when caches are stored in ~/.config, because then I have to manually tag those subdirectories for exclusion before doing a backup.

.word

Yes please!

Also if the normal invocation of your program produces more than 3k lines of stdout, sanitize it and default to a file.

A user may want to back it up as an important part of their system, control it’s permissions,
control its* permissions

I'd like to set nautilus to show hidden files, but I can't stand the amount of "trash" there's in home
Everyone is thinking "my app is the best, it totally deserves a ~/.myappisthebest directory"

W should make a .dotfiles directory for them.

Great read, thanks for sharing this!

It needed to be said.

I'm new to Linux. Should I be using something like chezmoi?
- No it's doesn't matter. There are so many other things to learn.
- If you spend a decent chunk of time on config, I'd say yes - it's worth learning 🙂
  
  whats chezmoi

Is there any good gui application for mange these but also edit them in a user friendly way like getting a dropdown for a settings like: Yes/No, Country Sweden. Number size range etc. So include validation. Even nix os does not have that.