Home config directory [xdg-user-dirs]

[gotar]

Instead of hardcoded (via MC_USERCONF_DIR) path mc should use dynamic directory specified by XDG_CONFIG_HOME variable (and fall back to ~/.config/mc according to ​http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-user-dirs). This is mainstream standard already adopted by many projects.

Note that in order to reduce .files mess and clean up $HOME some other solutions have been made, including PLD Linux-specific HOME_ETC. However it doesn't make much sense to keep maintaining our patches out of your repo, so just for the record:
​http://cvs.pld-linux.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/packages/mc/mc-home_etc.patch
​http://cvs.pld-linux.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/packages/mc/mc-home_etc2.patch

[gotar]

Looking at mentioned patches and #130 this should be really simple to code and so just needs a decision to be made.

[andrew_b]

There was such discussion in #139.
​XDG Base Directory Specification

[gotar]

Well...

'No, please let it where it is.'
'I would go for not moving...'
'+1. At this moment need to keep in ~/.mc'

...doesn't look like discussion much;) I'd like to see some arguments: what's the point in keeping $HOME/.files mess? Currently I've got 294 dot-files against 291 regular (aaargh!)
mc could even bend a little XDG and fallback to ~/.mc (not ~/.config/mc as standard says) - that's the way our HOME_ETC works. I doubt there are any reasons not to support something trivial, that doesn't change a thing when not _explicitly_ used.

[mk27]

Yuri Z. pointed me here after a brief discussion on the mailing list. I have two mc's compiled in order to use separate config directories; someone else indicated using a shell script to spoof ~ in order to do the same thing (which is not a very good solution).

I suppose something similar could be done using XDG variables. However, while the XDG concept is not a bad one, it appears to me that it is KDE specific. I think it would be much better to implement this using a command-line option; that way, people who want to use XDG can do that:

--home=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME

and non KDE/XDG users who just want to use several different mc configs can do that. This is a common approach used by a lot of applications and provides greater flexibility. It has the advantage of being familiar to everyone, whereas doing some XDG hack on a non-XDG system using a shell script is more awkward and less obvious.

Anyway, I'm not expecting the people who wrote this patch to change it, esp. if they are sick of maintaining it anyway. The home directory is only referenced in the source <20 times. I am totally willing to write a patch for a command line option, it will also give me a chance to familiarize myself with the glib option parser IF people think this can be incorporated into the mainstream mc to solve EVERYONE's problems or issues, vis. the config directory.

[gotar]

I'm not sure if .config is KDE-specific. In mine resides several directories not related to KDE at all, including LyX, Thunar, epdfview, gtk (!), wine and XFCE4. Moreover GNOME site references XDG too: ​http://library.gnome.org/devel/basedir-spec/

And there won't be any need for doing XDG hacks, because there is nothing like non-XDG system. You simply set the variable. Here in PLD we called it HOME_ETC, but it used to be ETC_DIR and CONFIG_DIR (working slightly different, being always relative to HOME) before. The idea grow stronger and now it's standard.

However it doesn't make me a difference how it could be done, mc always comes with an alias so it's not a problem to use it as command-line option --home=${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-~/.config} there.

[gotar]

After a short consideration no - it does make a difference. If such feature is implemented as command-line option one would have to change mc.desktop file in order to switch directory (especially for having the same as when running mc from command line), this is no solution at all. The only proper way I see is to use environment.

[andrew_b]

Replying to gotar:

Instead of hardcoded (via MC_USERCONF_DIR) path mc should use dynamic directory specified by XDG_CONFIG_HOME variable (and fall back to ~/.config/mc according to ​http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-user-dirs).

Glib provides that in g_get_user_config_dir() function.

[gotar]

Exactly. BTW why glib is used as default search engine? According to ​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_regular_expression_engines PCRE has more features.

[slavazanko]

BTW why glib is used as default search engine?

because we don't need for redundant relations to libraries - some time ago addition of new relation to GLIB led to almost holywar (GLIB relation was added since 4.55... or newest.. i don't remember). Therefore in our case libpcre may be almost fully replaced by libglib (even if libpcre has more features). :)

[andrew_b]

Replying to gotar:

BTW why glib is used as default search engine? According to ​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_regular_expression_engines PCRE has more features.

Internally, Glib uses PCRE. Since 2.14 it provides a GRegex, therefore no need to link mc with libpcre if glib >= 2.14 is used. In case of glib < 2.14, mc uses native PCRE and links with libpcre.

[andrew_b]

​GRegex

[slavazanko]

Created branch 1851_xdg_config

initial changeset:d6028285fa25f8827cb38dd3a3db26dc861d8579

review, please.

[slavazanko]

Need to update docs...

[slavazanko]

Branch was changed.

Changesets:

• 85d04a0b0638bd861266b381a501308042c546e3: Home config directory (xdg-user-dirs)
• a52410592ed2cf1ef64e0c4f790ff31742262408: Renamed variables mc_home to mc_sysconfig_dir and mc_home_alt to mc_share_data_dir for more sence
• dd766ac2351cddee44150f2015ca43dd497d741f: Updated docs (man pages and comments in source code)

Review again, please.

[angel_il]

uups sorry, i need more time...

[slavazanko]

merged to master. changeset:1b9957058a05e94b361a6913c7f8cf5ef98a99a9

git log --pretty=oneline d21eb43..8af4c9c

[slavazanko]

have troubles while migrate from old user config directory to new.
Not all files have copied.

[slavazanko]

Created branch 1851_fix_migrate

Initial changeset:2f059ed330c0090bfaf3e07fc9b96b999726016d

Review, please.

[slavazanko]

Merge changeset:0b71156473a1067e61f4191fff68f78941aa3b6b

[andrew_b]

Support of XGD_* shell variables was broken in [13a660d2e0cdb43ec46df38e53687a77f76581e6].

[andrew_b]

Branch: 1851_xdg_fix (parent: master).
changeset:a13f5ef731a70fcb497b0c40012f05878a54021d

[andrew_b]

Merged to master: [ce401d797432b83228271029aeaf07f0ac5f2d3a]

[andrew_b]

Merged to 4.8.1-stable: [69b580d1a065fe5c2090daaf5ae59198297f0630]

git log --pretty=oneline f3a2e41..69b580d