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How can I force all applications to use $XDG_CONFIG_HOME instead of ~/.APP?

rated 0 times [ 4] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 4775 / 3 Years ago, sat, may 29, 2021, 6:02:08

As far as I understand, the XDG guidelines recommend that applications store their configuration in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/APP (usually ~/.config/APP) rather than ~/.APP (I'm not sure if there are also Debian/Ubuntu guidelines?). However, I have found a number of configuration files and folders using the older ~/.APP convention.

Is there a way to globally force non-confirming applications to use the XDG folder conventions?

Or do I just have to log a ticket with each project? :D

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3 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago pardsea · Accepted Answer

I found some excellent configuration information at XDG Base Directory support.

This gives great hints about setting things like:

export LESSHISTFILE="$XDG_CACHE_HOME"/less/history

so that legacy config / cache / data files can still use the XDG specified directories.

I also needed to add in my ~/.bashrc:

# XDG - set defaults as they may not be set

# See https://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html

# and https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory#Support

export XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config"

export XDG_DATA_HOME="$HOME/.local/share"

export XDG_CACHE_HOME="$HOME/.cache"



if [ ! -w ${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR:="/run/user/$UID"} ]; then

  echo "$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR ($XDG_RUNTIME_DIR) not writable. Unsetting." >&2

  unset XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

else

  export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

fi

These are not set by default on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.