From: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
To: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>
Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] A question about ls(1)
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2019 07:52:31 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20190430115231.GK3789@mit.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20190429223226.303F9156E40C@mail.bitblocks.com>
On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 03:32:19PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
> > My workstation Debian system has a staggering 3467 files in that
> > directory, spread around 444 directories (75 directories directly
> > under ~/.config). Plus another 142 dot-directories and 66 dotfiles in
> > ~/. Now, ~/.config typically uses multiple files per application, and
> > at a glance there's some stuff there that could definitely go, but I
> > still shudder to think of having all of those directly under ~/, so
> > it's clearly doing _some_ good in that regard.
>
> I suspect most of these files contain some state and cached
> application data or content as opposed to configuration.
Applications which follow the XDG specification (which is what
specified ~/.config are supposed to use ~/.cache for cache files (the
per-user analog of /var/cache) and ~/.local/share for data files (the
per-user analog of /usr/share). These locations can be overridden by
the environment variables XDG_CACHE_HOME, XDG_DATA_HOME, and
XDG_CONFIG_HOME to override ~/.config.
While I would never under-estimate the ability for application writers
to Get Things Wrong[1], at least in theory there should *not* be state
or cache files stored in ~/.config.
[1] For example, GUI text editors updating precious files in place
using O_TRUNC, as opposed to writing to foo.new, reading the extended
attributes and Posix ACL's from file foo and writing them to foo.new,
calling fsync, and then renaming foo.new to foo --- because The Right
Way is too much trouble for an application author. Sigh....
Cheers,
- Ted
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-04-30 12:01 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 23+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-04-28 16:54 Norman Wilson
2019-04-28 19:45 ` Jon Forrest
2019-04-28 20:00 ` Bakul Shah
2019-04-29 18:05 ` Michael Kjörling
2019-04-29 20:37 ` Warner Losh
2019-04-29 20:44 ` Christopher Browne
2019-04-30 6:44 ` Michael Kjörling
2019-04-30 7:24 ` Kurt H Maier
2019-04-30 10:35 ` Wesley Parish
2019-04-29 22:32 ` Bakul Shah
2019-04-30 11:52 ` Theodore Ts'o [this message]
2019-04-28 22:16 ` Thoma Paulsen
2019-04-29 0:53 ` John P. Linderman
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2019-04-27 23:03 Noel Chiappa
2019-04-27 20:11 Norman Wilson
2019-04-27 14:16 Anthony Martin
2019-04-27 15:38 ` Warner Losh
2019-04-27 15:42 ` Larry McVoy
2019-04-28 23:59 ` Warner Losh
2019-04-28 11:47 ` Dan Cross
2019-04-28 12:00 ` arnold
2019-04-28 14:44 ` jcs
2019-04-28 16:15 ` Bakul Shah
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20190430115231.GK3789@mit.edu \
--to=tytso@mit.edu \
--cc=bakul@bitblocks.com \
--cc=tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).