Re: Application files in $HOME

[Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl>]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 02:02:04PM -0300, Daniel Ruoso wrote:
> What if the packages tells to dpkg which files or directories it will
> create on the user's home directory and when a package is purged the
> user could run a program to purge the files of packages that no longer
> exists.

I have a better idea :)  What if packages don't leave droppings in my
home directory in the first place?  I have all sorts of dotfiles (and
even dot-directories) that I never asked for.  It's reasonable for a
program to install a dotfile when I configure it differently from the
default, but there's no reason to create a dotfile that's identical
to the default.

In addition to being annoying in themselves, such useless dotfiles
get in the way when a newer version has different defaults or
incompatible configuration fields.

When I do configure a program (if it doesn't have an interactive
configuration interface), I want to do it by creating a small,
human-editable file that contains the _differences_ from the defaults.
So even then I have no use for a copy of the default configuration.
(If I want an example, I can look in /usr/doc/$foo/examples, which is
a better place for it than $HOME.)

Richard Braakman