Updating the recommendations for user configuration files (Policy chapter 9)
Dear Debian Policy Maintainers,
Policy section 9.1.1 (File System Structure) [0] talks about per-user
configuration files and says: «It is recommended that such files start
with the '.' character (a "dot file"), and if an application needs to
create more than one dot file then the preferred placement is in a
subdirectory with a name starting with a '.' character, (a "dot
directory")».
As you probably know, there is now a trend [2][3] of placing all
configuration files into the same directory, which defaults to
~/.config/ but can be changed, as well as two separate directories for
user data and recoverable/non-important data (~/.local/share,
~/.cache). This is described in the XDG Base Directory specification
[1], and I believe it is a big advancement in terms of cleaning up the
mess that home directories have become and has the added benefit of
separating data you may want to backup (config, data) from random junk
(cache).
I'd like to suggest the quoted policy statement be updated to
recommend, or at least mention, said specification.
[0] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-opersys.html
[1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
[2] https://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/XDGConfigFolders
[3] http://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/XDG_Filesystem_Hierarchy
Kind regards,
--
Siegfried-Angel Gevatter Pujals (RainCT)
Free Software Developer 363DEAE3
P.S.: Please keep me CC'd since I'm not subscribed to this list.
P.S.2: I'm sorry if this has already been discussed before. I've tried
doing a search on debbug and this mailing lists' archives and it
didn't turn up anything.
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