I want a clean config directory! :: rabbiticTranslator
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And it can be done easily, ackshually. But what is that all about? The problem It has been a longstanding complaint that the ~/.config/ directory on Linux systems can get riddled with configuration files. This is the case with KDE software as well. My idea is that we should be putting those into subdirectories inside ~/.config/. The Freedesktop XDG Base Directory specification generally only states that standard configuration files should go under XDG_CONFIG_DIRS.

There’s a proposal at the linked blog post for how to clean up the config directory.

The post goes into detail which changes would be required in KDE software using Qt.

After reading, I just have one question (the blog does not seem to have a comment section): how does this handle transitioning from the old location to the new location? Imagine having a katerc config file under ~/.config and one under ~/.config/kate (which is the suggestion from the post) - should those be merged once and then the old one gets deleted?

  • stevecrox
    0•1 year ago

    @MartinR the Maven convention for packaging is a group identifer/package is the inverse domain order.

    Taking plasma-org.kde.desktop-appletsrc you would create a group identifer of: org.plasma.kde.desktop With the artefact identifier being: appletsrc.

    The folder structure would then look like:

    .config  
\-\>org  
\-\>-\>plasma  
\-\>-\>-\>kde  
\-\>-\>-\>-\>desktop  
\-\>-\>-\>-\>-\>appletsrc

    Its simple

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•1 year ago

      The proposal isn’t mine, I just read and shared it :-) The blog post has a paragraph or two about multpile subfolders, as I read it, the specification is not clear on whether thats supported? But actually: at first glance I think this would be better to have, because it would possibly make synchronizing to a new PC/Laptop even easier. However, this only works if any machine-specific settings (e.g. “offset /size of window”) are not stored in config, as that might break if you sync config between a multi-monitor setup and a single-monitor setup. This requires a lot of thought…

    • @Molecular0079
      1•1 year ago

      That feels way too nested to be useful IMHO. It’s great for packaging dev tools, but not really for handling config directories for user space apps. I just want ~/.config/KDE/<app>

      • stevecrox
        1•1 year ago

        @Molecular0079 that is a starting point.

        Once you start laying out directories, I suspect you will find a root level everything lives in. You flatten the hierarchy so you have one folder jumping to that level.

    • @[email protected]
      1•1 year ago

      I always considered plasma to be a part/sub project of kde, therefore org.kde.plasma would seem correct-er.