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ninkendoyesterday at 12:34 PM1 replyview on HN

I wonder how many apps actually read the correct XDG environment variables and obey them, versus just hardcoding paths that match their machine’s config paths (typically ~/.config/*)

I almost want to set up a VM that sets up XDG_CONFIG_HOME as ~/.foobar and see how many apps actually respect it, and how many still write to ~/.config.


Replies

jdpageyesterday at 12:57 PM

A few years ago I had a Windows box where I pointed XDG_CONFIG_HOME et al to the corresponding-ish Windows paths (AppData subdirectories, mostly) so that the many Linux-derived CLI programs I was using wouldn't clutter up my userdir, and it worked pretty well, though there were a few programs that didn't get the memo. Unfortunately I don't remember which ones they were. Most programs get it right, though!