Re: Structure in $HOME

[Claes Holmerson <claes it-slav net>]

Hi Nils,

Your suggested requirements are worth considering. Dividing host-specific
data from host-independent is certainly useful.  Is there any good example
when different platforms need to be separated?  Perhaps when there are
symlinks to directories below /, like into /tmp etc? BSD differs
from Linux in some regards I learned in other mails on this topic.

Sharing a directory live between programs running on different machines
could give many problems. Too hard to accomplish perhaps, at least in a
general way. Does GConf handle this?

Versioning of preferences seems to be handled at least in GConf by giving
detailed instructions on how keys should look, and how they can (not)
change. I am open for other ideas too.

Claes

On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Nils Pedersen wrote:

> Hi Claes,
>
> I read your email with interest on xdg-list. I have also followed the
> thread
> that ensued on this list :)
>
> I think in your proposal had a number of requirements that it wanted to
> solve:
>
> 1) clean up the current .files mess in $HOME
> 2) provide consistent locations/policies for:
>    a) data/files (persistent and temporary)
>    b) config info
>
> I think those were the base requirements, but correct me if I missed
> something.
>
> Unixey file systems also tend to distinguish between host-specific,
> platform-specific and platform-indpendent information. Let's say I
> shared my home directory between a Debian machine and a Solaris
> machine; I wouldn't want my versions of GNOME to trample on each
> others config files, or worse still break. I think that was
> discussed in the future thread
>
> Also I would add a versioning requirement. Lets say I have GNOME 2.x
> and 3.0 on the same machine. I would also expect things to run smoothly.
> For example, running GNOME 2.x apps would respect the GNOME 3 theme :)
>
> So I would add:
>
> 2c) (application) versioning of data/config
> 2d) host specific vrs platform independent data/config
>
> Note: I haven't been able to think of a good reason why we would want to
> specifically pull out platform-specific stuff in $HOME (e.g. Debian PPC
> vrs X86) - compiler configs?
>
> So, if we agree on the requirements, we can come up with a proposal that
> even Seth would like (although I am doubtful :)). Of course, Havoc will
> have already sorted this out in the next version of Gconf :).
>
> Nils
>
> Claes Holmerson wrote:
>
> >(I post this also on kde-devel)
> >
> >Hi,
> >
> >I posted a mail to freedesktop.org (titled "Structure in $HOME") with
> >a wish that KDE and Gnome would agree on a common directory structure
> >for preferences and data in $HOME. You find it on this link, together
> >with my arguments.
> >
> >https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/xdg-list/2003-January/001015.html
> >
> >I understand that this is a big change, but I also think it would be
> >very valuable. I also hope that if Gnome and KDE agreed on something,
> >other applications would follow (if the spec was good enough).
> >
> >Note that I do not suggest that KDE and Gnome would have to share
> >actual preferences and data (even if that would be good), only that
> >there should be separation between different kinds of data, in
> >the same manner as there is a separation between /etc and /var and so on.
> >This would give several benefits that I have described above.
> >
> >Even if this looks as large task, in the longer term, like two major
> >versions away, it might be possible? It would be nice to hear
> >opinions on this.
> >
> >Thanks, Claes
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >desktop-devel-list mailing list
> >desktop-devel-list gnome org
> >http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
> >
> >
>
>
>