Re: [Evolution-hackers] XDG Base Directories -- Wrapping Up

[Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com>]

On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 08:24 +0200, Milan Crha wrote:
> does this mean that one would be able to keep .evolution folder as is,
> with some XDG foo? You know, sometimes is useful to run 2.30.x while
> developing 2.31.x on the same machine, where your change makes it
> impossible.
> 
> But if it's possible, do you know the XDG foo to achieve it?

It's not possible to set the XDG environment variables to mimic
Evolution's existing directory layout.  I suppose you could try playing
games with soft links, but I won't recommend anything like that.

Easiest approach I can think of is to rename your ~/.evolution directory
to something else before running 2.31.6 or later (that goes for both Evo
and the D-Bus services).  That will prevent migration from occurring.
Then rename it back to ~/.evolution before running 2.30.x.

I haven't tried this myself, but I anticipate you'll notice some UI
state missing the first time you run 2.31.6 and it will have to recreate
all your cached data, but your user preferences and account settings in
GConf should carry over.

You -will- however get the duplicate local ESource glitch, since both
2.30.x and 2.31.6 will still be writing to the same GConf keys.  So just
be aware of that.

Once we have both stable and unstable versions compliant with the XDG
base directory spec, this will get a lot easier to manage.  You'll be
able to set up as many separate Evolution profiles as you want in the
same user account, making it much easier to test things like first time
setup experience or meeting negotiations between multiple "users", all
without harming your normal working profile.