> My recollection is that most CP/M programs were configured via patching.

I honestly would have liked that better for a lot of programs than the dotfiles they litter all over my home directory.

▲ fredoralive 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Part of the philosophy of the slightly odd suckless people is their projects are mostly configured by changing the source code and recompiling. This is I suppose a similar approach in a modern open source vein. Although their general asceticism makes their projects a bit of an acquired taste I suspect.

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analog_daddy 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Ohh acquired taste it is.. I had two stints with suckless software. First, when i was in early twenties when I had a lot of time in the world, and thought the manliest way to talk to a machine is all through low level C code. Had a whole flow to patch it and heck the code is so well written and commented, i was able to understand it. Then, i guess life happened and i discovered more interesting stuff to spend time on.

And now in my late twenties, suckless terminal is the only one that would work reliably on a shitty old enterprise linux system at work. Yeah, we got xterm and konsole (the older one). I am seeing them in a whole different light now. I did not read the source code now and it is effectively a foreign language to me, but just being able to have modern features in it without too many dependencies is a different level of bliss. This time, I am glad I have the flexi patch to the rescue since, i passed on suckless terminal as a real alternative since I don’t want to patch it manually or solve merge conflicts!

Even though I don’t like the elitist attitude of the project, can’t deny they got a point. Why does a terminal emulator need to be so complicated!

https://github.com/bakkeby/st-flexipatch

	▲	archargelod 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> I don’t want to patch it manually or solve merge conflicts I wonder, is this really such a big problem? How often do people add patches or change their config? I've configured my st once and haven't touched that build for years. I use only few patches like scrollback, custom colortheme and a "plumb" for few scripts. I've also had an opportunity recently, to try a "modern" and trendy terminal and I can't see myself switching to something slower (in terms of lag) and using 10x more memory and cpu even when idle for literally zero gain.

▲ Hendrikto an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If people just followed the XDG Base Directory Specification, config file littering would be a non-issue. More and more projects adopt it, even holdouts like Firefox.

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ninkendo 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I wonder how many apps actually read the correct XDG environment variables and obey them, versus just hardcoding paths that match their machine’s config paths (typically ~/.config/*)

I almost want to set up a VM that sets up XDG_CONFIG_HOME as ~/.foobar and see how many apps actually respect it, and how many still write to ~/.config.

	▲	jdpage 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		A few years ago I had a Windows box where I pointed XDG_CONFIG_HOME et al to the corresponding-ish Windows paths (AppData subdirectories, mostly) so that the many Linux-derived CLI programs I was using wouldn't clutter up my userdir, and it worked pretty well, though there were a few programs that didn't get the memo. Unfortunately I don't remember which ones they were. Most programs get it right, though!

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skydhash 13 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don’t mind ~/.* for config, especially when the config is just one or two files. What I don’t like is programs like go and cargo treating my $HOME as a dumping ground for every file they want to download and/or cache.

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user3939382 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I contemplated for years and eventually saw someone implement a transparent kernel redirect for programs reaching for ~/.*

▲ PunchyHamster 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, they are supposed to be all in .config, problem is many app developers think they are special little boys that deserve its own directory

▲ delta_p_delta_x an hour ago | parent | next [-]

%LOCALAPPDATA% on Windows. Or better still, use GetAppContainerFolderPath or SHGetKnownFolderPath with FOLDERID_LocalAppData.

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ziml77 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

I don't know if anyone is actually using roaming profiles, but config should go into the %APPDATA% folder to support that. %LOCALAPPDATA% is for things that shouldn't be synced to different machines, such as caches.

	▲	Uvix 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I know we used to use them in our corporate environment. Not sure if we still do, or if they gave up and called OneDrive “good enough”.

▲ delusional an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It all sounds so easy, until you learn about the XDG Base Directory Specification[1]. You're actually supposed to do a whole song and dance around a hierarchical set of environment variables, associated defaults, and resolution orders.

Interfacing with people is never easy.

[1]: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir/latest/

	▲	archargelod 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		No. Actually, it's easy. Just check for directory or use a fallback. For example here's how you'd do this in bash: `export CONFIG_DIR="${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}" export CACHE_DIR="${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}" ...` XDG_*_DIRS are a bit more complicated, but nothing that can't be solved with a simple for-loop in any modern programming language.

▲ ozlikethewizard 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yea this is something I'd love to see standardised, a distro that was able to enforce a .config folder somehow would be a winner for me. Think weve probably missed the boat though.

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9dev 2 hours ago | parent [-]

As these things go, there obviously is a standard for this called the XDG Base Directory Specification[0], which elegantly solves almost all configuration path needs—and has been ignored, violated, or only partially implemented, since forever.

[0]: https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir/latest/

	▲	amelius an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Say what you want about AI but one nice aspect of it is that it is more likely to follow these kinds of standards than humans.

▲ mort96 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You would've preferred binary patching of the executable? Really?