Bug #257... what do we do ?

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004, Jasper Huijsmans wrote:

> Jean-François Wauthy wrote:
> > I was talking with Jasper on #xfce-dev about bug killing and we came to
> > the #257 problem ($HOME/.config/xfce4/)... Jasper and I think we really
> > need to take a decision about that. If we choose to change the place of
> > all the config files to ~/.config/xfce4 (as Freedesktop suggests), i can
> > take care of it, i've plenty of time these days :).

personally, i like it.  there's always an adjustment period for new 
things like this - people not sure where the config files are, etc., and 
it'll die down after more and more people intuitively know that the 
.config directory is there.  i think cutting down on clutter in homedir 
dotfiles and dotdirectories is a worthy goal.  i have 283 dotfiles/dirs 
in my home directory, and i'd love it if a lot of them would use 
.config.

> I generally like the ideas presented in the basedir spec (that's where 
> this .config/ dir comes from), but I can imagine many people don't:
> 
> - it doesn't buy us anything, no improvement at all

an excellent point.  we already use a single directory for everything.  
however, in the process, it would be nice to split things up.  i don't 
think there should be _anything_ in ~/.xfce4 (or ~/.config/xfce4) except 
directories.  xfdesktop/, xfce4-panel/, xfwm4/, etc.  perhaps we could 
do that in the process ^_~

> - nobody else is using it, so it doesn't reduce the clutter in the users 
> home dir either (as is the intention of ~/.config)

i think this is a pretty weak argument.  _someone_ has to start using it 
before it gets used.  if the idea has merit, why shouldn't that someone 
be us?

> I think the session manager does use it, currently. So, IMO, we do need 
> to decide what we want, and make sure all our modules use the same location.

yeah, it's pretty confusing with parts of xfce using it and parts not.  
it has to be one or the other, all or nothing.  if we _do_ decide to 
change, we also need to check for old config files on startup if we 
don't find them in the new location...

	-brian