Re: Standardizing ~/.cache/ and similar things.

[Sam Hocevar <sam@zoy.org>]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2005, Alastair McKinstry wrote:

> Interesting, but very specific to the caching example.  There are other 
> useful parts of the proposal, too: e.g. if libraries are in ~/lib then 
> its easy to have $LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/lib work on multiple 
> applications; also
> for an installer to install an application into a users directory. For this
> reason I prefer $HOME/var , $HOME/lib, etc. to .lib, .cache, .bin, etc.

   That comes with its own set of problems, too: it becomes difficult to
install several different versions of the same software, to uninstall
a particular piece of software, or simply to backup/migrate everything
related to application $foo.

> >It's not like it's an Herculean task to add a couple of directories to
> >the exclude list of your backup program...
>
> This is the wrong way round, IMHO: rather than having to examine every
> new application I use to see what config files and caches it creates
> (and never be sure of that: what files in .evolution can I safely remove as
> caches, and what ones are essential config? is it safe to remove / not 
> backup  $HOME/.evolution/IMAP/* ? ), and add them to my backup
> program excludes list, I can just add /home/var/cache/* to my excludes
> list and change applications to use it.  No need to keep a list of
> cache directories up-to-date.

   Or you could trust the application for knowing exactly what is
a cache dir and what isn't, and have it implement the CACHEDIR.TAG
proposal.

-- 
Sam.