unity-design team mailing list archive

[Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 25/03/10 20:05, Krzysztof Klimonda wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 19:49 +0000, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
>   
>> Also from Jo:
>>
>>     
>>> In order to clean up, perhaps Canonical and Ubuntu would consider a much louder support for XDG Base Directory Specification? Many developers are hesitant to follow it, perhaps a strong leadership is required there as well?
>>>   
>>>       
>> This seems like a real win, too. Looks like quite a few apps do support it.
>>
>> This sort of thing is useful for us to say "is a requirement for main
>> inclusion in the next LTS", to try an accelerate adoption.
>>
>>     
> Hey,
>
> Thanks for rising this subject on the mailing list. I'd love to read
> some discussion about implementing this specifiation.
>
> Although I'm a big fan of the XDG Base Dir specification there are few
> ambiguities that should be resolved before we ask everyone to follow it
>
> The thing I have on my mind is described in the
> http://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/466541 (most important is the 4th comment
> made by the Transmission developer).
> If XDG_DATA_HOME is supposed to be used just as the /usr/share/ is used
> then it is currently misused by applications and the whole specification
> is questionable (if people are following it only partially then it
> creates just as much confusion as if they weren't following it at all).
> If it's supposed to be a directory where developers are supposed to save
> all files that are not configuration but are important to the
> application then it also should be stated clearly.
>   

Thanks for the pointer. I commented on the bug that I don't understand
the confusion. Have cc'd Waldo Bastian, the author of the spec, to ask
if he can shed any light. It does seem like the guidance as to what goes
into which directory could be clarified and examples provided,
especially for tricky things. Maybe that would justify a 0.9 version of
the spec :-)

Waldo?

Mark

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