linux-traipu team mailing list archive

[Jeff Jahr <1887804@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Please see comment #20.

My online backup set specifically excludes $HOME/.cache (the default or
unset value of $XDG_CACHE_HOME) to avoid churning backup snapshots with
transient application cache data.

I don't know if chromium ever respected $XDG_CACHE_HOME (it would appear
from the bug report mentioned in comment #8 that it does not), but in
previous packages, it used to store cached data under
$HOME/.cache/chromium and now it no longer does. Although it could have
been a change in chromium's behavior, the change of location appears to
be co-incidental with the transition from deb to snap packaging.

Please note that in the snap packaged version of chromium (build
88.0.4324.96), there is a $HOME/snap/chromium/common/.cache directory,
but chromium does not store the bulk of its cache data in that location.
Most of the cached data is found in 86 or so various directories under
$HOME/snap/chromium/common/chromium/Default .

It is not clear to me that I can reasonably exclude either or both of
$HOME/snap/chromium/common/.cache/ or
$HOME/snap/chromium/common/chromium/Default/ to achieve the desired
result of limiting transient disk cached data from entering the backup
snapshots while keeping chromium user configurations backed up.

Since the previous deb packaged version of chromium did store its cached
data in the XDG default location (although perhaps only by accident?
maybe the deb package maintainer configured it?), and the current snap
packaged version does not, I am looking for current package maintainer's
guidance on the best way for our backup system to handle this change in
behavior.

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AL - BR, which is subscribed to Chromium Browser.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1887804

Title:
  chromium-browser does not follow XDG base directory specification

Status in Chromium Browser:
  Invalid
Status in chromium-browser package in Ubuntu:
  Opinion

Bug description:
  Currently Chromium does not follow the XDG base directory
  specification which means that the cache and configuration folder
  aren't properly used.

  This causes the issue that it's nearly impossible to properly migrate
  or back up Chromium configuration (between computers) and it makes for
  example mounting cache as tmpfs or wiping it very very difficult.

  I felt those both immensely when trying to migrate my home folder,
  gigabytes of cache in ~/snap/chromium/[id]/.config/chromium/[folder]
  (and ~/snap itself is also not XDG base directory specification
  compliant, shame!).

  There's also the issue that the previous configuration that is located
  properly, isn't migrated by the migrational package.

  In order to fix this bug, it would require making the snap package
  follow the XDG base directory specification.

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