Re: [Evolution-hackers] User directory layout for 2.0

[Ettore Perazzoli <ettore ximian com>]

> > First of all, we need to move the root directory to a hidden place; 
> > so instead of storing everything under ~/evolution we should store
> > everything under ~/.evolution.  (Yeah, finally. :-))
> 
> Having it configurable via an environmental variable is useful, not only
> for testing multiple configurations, but also for multiple profiles.

Yeah, having it configurable is a plus.

There is one problem though...  The list of accounts is in GConf, and
the list of available calendars and addressbook is going to be in GConf
as well.  Those stay the same even if you run Evolution with a different
EVOLUTION_DIRECTORY env variable; which makes the environment variable
not that useful in the first place.

In particular, the list of calendars/addressbooks are going to have URIs
to the files.  Even if we make the URIs relative to ~/.evolution, you'll
still need the same set of calendars/addressbooks to be present in all
the "profiles" for things to work properly.

> Sure, but it doesn't really matter for any of this stuff, it's all just
> private data.

Well, right now it's in the toplevel, and it needs to be moved down to a
different location, so I figured it was worth mentioning...

> > We should also drop the default_user directory altogether, and let the
> > components do their own initialization the first time they are
> > started.  The current mechanism is painful to maintain and just plain
> > ugly...
> 
> I don't think it's that bad, for email we'd just basically do the same
> for the mail files anyway.

But isn't it easier/nicer to do it programmatically instead?

-- Ettore