[inanutshellus]

Can I also soapbox about the XDG_CONFIG_HOME (~/.config) folder having gigs of temp data in it?

(I'm looking at you, Slack!)

How awesome would it be to be able to back up my custom app configs just by copying around one tiny folder? Or throwing it in a git repo and knowing what config changed when? :\

[0cf8612b2e1e]

The fault lies with Electron [0]. Open issue since 2016 to fix this behavior only for it to devolve into a morass of, “What is cache?”

[0] https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/8124

[vngzs]

    $ du -sch ~/.config/Slack
    846M $HOME/.config/Slack
    846M total

... this is on a two day old machine. WTF, Slack? Junk cached data belongs in ~/.local/share ($XDG_DATA_HOME), not ~/.config.

[deadbunny]

I think you mean `~/.cache`.

[Already__Taken]

a bunch of windows stuff does this too putting config in appdata/local and huge cache assets in appdata/roaming. anything that depends on good behaviour is doomed imo like Google wave circles

[0cf8612b2e1e]

What’s really frustrating are the number of first-party Microsoft products which do this.

[accoil]

Yeah. It annoys me to no end that the new powershell didn't take the opportunity to move the config out of My Documents and into roaming app data which in theory is where that sort of file should be.

It's things like that which have made me give up on %USERPROFILE% (and to a lesser extent $HOME), and I now put my files that I care about into a completely separate folder outside of the normal hierarchy.

[DragonMaus]

Could you elaborate on that? I too am quite unhappy with the mess my %USERPROFILE% has become.

[accoil]

Oh, it's really not anything impressive. I've just decided to treat %USERPROFILE% as for machine generated files only. I then have a new directory on C: where I put my documents/projects/etc (all in appropriate sub folders).

My config files are a bit more interesting, and are stored in a chezmoi[^1] repo. If I tinker with a program enough, I generally move its config into there so I can keep track of it and the changes (to make this easier I have a bat file in shell:sendto to add files/folders to chezmoi).

Thinking about this, I should probably move the chezmoi repo into my personal directory, and symlink it back to it's normal location.

[1]: https://www.chezmoi.io/

[toastal]

Should've kept Slack in a containered in a browser tab where it belongs so it can't go messing with your system or prevent you from blocking their tracking.

[boosteri]

And then I've seen websites hoggi g gigs of local storage after you visit them once a blue moon. The trend is blatantly towards no optimization whatsoever. Apart from profits and squeezing the last drop off your customers by any means necessary