[mehrdadn]

> I don't get this, what's the problem here? Having config files in root means you know they can apply to all sub directories.

This makes sense for configs that could ostensibly do this, but that's only a fraction of them. Regardless of what we do about those (if anything), the other ones at least shouldn't be laid out like this.

[themarkn]

... “shouldn’t be laid out like this” doesn’t explain why it’s a _problem_ though. I’m curious about this as well. I think it’s fine as is.

[mehrdadn]

Same reason why we have subdirectories in the first place and don't just shove everything into one directory. Same reason why you (hopefully) don't put everything on your desk and instead designate places for things, like in drawers. Same reason why we have a ~/.config folder now instead of just shoving everything into ~/ like we used to.

[sergeykish]

There is no One True Place, would you like drawers with my preferences and no way to override?

The list of configuration files/directories is known. Why can't those who bother present them as they desire? Instead of forcing their will on others.

There reason for ~/.config is separation from data and cache. And the reason behind XDG Base Directory Specification is a generic way to run application with another config `XDG_DATA_HOME=foo bar`.

[tomc1985]

> Same reason why we have a ~/.config folder now instead of just shoving everything into ~/ like we used to.

Who/what is the "we" here? Last I checked my homefolder was still chock full of dotfiles in-use.

[hedora]

Now, half of them are in ~/.config This is better because it means you have to look in more places.

Similarly, things also like to hide state in ~/.cache

If they didn’t then rm -rf .appname would restore it to default settings, and we can’t have that.

[bmn__]

I notice you chose to exclusively point out the negative aspects.

[tomc1985]

https://xkcd.com/927/

[noskllzgap88]

So copy them in there after you clone it?

This is the sort of issue that leads to “this page intentionally blank” type use of resources.

“When everything is a hammer...” when all you have to work with is a file system it always looks messy.

I’m more interested in making sure the right values exist in memory for runtime use.

Source, config, and comments could all live in one file and be specially delimited for look up too.

It’s all arbitrary at that point. This is really focusing on the wrong issues in computing.

[jrumbut]

I think it's the varying degrees of importance and surprise factor.

One dotfile has the maintainer's eccentric syntax highlighting preferences, another has critical build system settings needed to make any use of the code. Which ones do I really need to knand which are just conveniences for users of a particular IDE?

There are very few pieces of information where, to me, the natural place to look for it is "a dotfile at the root of the project." gitignore is an exception here.