desktop-packages team mailing list archive

[Chad Miller <chad.miller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

An example of the gross failure of this is "rmdir ~/Videos" .

XDG tools will then notice the dir not missing, and change the
definition to "$HOME/" .

Thereafter, media scanner will treat home as the Videos dir, and spend
days of CPU scanning ~/sourcecode/projectsfoo/tests/10TB-of-video-
files/* .

----

xdg-user-dirs should be an expression of the user's preferences, not an
assertion of what was valid on the disk at some point in the past.

It does not matter whether the named variable's target existed on disk
the last time it looked. Existence of the target is a function of time,
the user's whims, and language. Apps using a XDG name at the user's
request should handle the nonexistence by prompting the user to confirm
intent, or merely create what it was asked to use.

Redefining the variable without any ability to discover or undo it is
evil.  Lying about the user's preference is wrong. Assuming apps can
never mkdir() what they are asked to use is wrong.

----

In the mean time, apps should probably interpret XDG variables that are
"$HOME/" (with significan trailing slash) as previously clobbered from
this bug, invalid, and then prompt the user to re-set it to default or
pick a location. If users pick their home, do not include the trailing
slash in the value, and set it to "$HOME" instead.

The trailing slash is a good semaphore because any app is already
expecting the returned value not to end in a slash. Most values from the
XDG tool are like "/home/alice/Music", no trailing slash, so they append
slash and the rest of their relative filename.

** Also affects: mediascanner2 (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: mediascanner2
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to xdg-user-dirs in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/285998

Title:
  mv or rm of any XDG user dir causes its definition to change to wrong,
  oversimple $HOME/

Status in Media Scanner v2:
  New
Status in “mediascanner2” package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in “xdg-user-dirs” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  $ rmdir ~/Videos
  ...
  $ mkdir ~/Videos

  
  Hours later, find apps doing crazy things in home directory.

  During the elided period between rmdir and mkdir, if the XDG functions
  were run, the user's intent is forever lost, and its value is set to
  the user's home directory.

  Apps can not rely on XDG functions not to lie about what the user wants. It prefers to say what exists, not now when the app is accessing it, but when the XDG functions ran. It does not provide a file descriptor for an
  open_at(2) call. It provides a stale, text name of what used to exist on disk, and often not even what the user wanted.

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