Bug #257... what do we do ?

[Benedikt Meurer]

Brian J. Tarricone wrote:
> ~/.config/xfce4/
> |- xfce4-panel/
> |  |- settings.xml (old xfce4rc)
> |  `- plugins/
> |     |- weather.xml
> |     `- notes.xml
> |- xfdesktop/
> |  |- menu.xml
> |  `- backdrops.list
> |- xfce-mcs-manager/
>   |- backdrop.xml
>   |- display.xml
>   |- gtk.xml
>   ...
>   `- xfwm4.xml

You forgot the panel plugins, and here comes the problem: Panel plugins 
are neither config files nor data files, so they don't fit into either 
~/.config or ~/.data. Currently per-user plugins go to 
~/.xfce4/panel-plugins.

I think the best way to solve this issue would be to declare a directory 
in the users homedir (something like ~/local or ~/programs) where local 
additions (panel plugins, programs, splash engines, etc.) can be 
installed. This would require small changes to the panel, the session 
manager, the xinitrc script (it should add ~/local/bin to the path) and 
libxfce4util (~/local/etc/xdg and ~/local/share should be taken into 
account). This would add greater flexibility to the desktop IMHO, cause 
then a user could simply install applications locally w/o messing with 
his system and these stuff would appear automagically, w/o the need to 
set any environment variables (PATH, XDG_*_DIRS, etc.) manually.

We could even make the path configurable through an environment variable 
(lets say XFCE4LOCAL or something like that, in case a user doesn't want 
a directory ~/local in his homedir, but prefers a hidden dir, say 
~/.myapps).

Opinions?

>    -brian

Benedikt