[Oxodao]

.gitignore in $HOME/.config:

```

*

!nvim/

!dunst/

!i3/

```

Then you have a whitelist which is clearly not that hard to maintain

For the cache, the opposite argument is just as true:

If I want to clear cache from everything to save space, I can just `rm -rf ~/.cache` instead. And this case is a lot more common than wanting to "start from a clean profile" :/

[ajsnigrutin]

> I can just `rm -rf ~/.cache

But can you? Did you really close all the apps using ~/.cache? What if some app is just doing some cleanup operation, moves a bunch of stuff to cache, and the files are missing now? Did you just delete android studio cache in the middle of a compile?

You can also make a script like your .config, but it's called "clear_cache.sh", where you hardcore a few paths you usually clean manually.

[account42]

Programs that cannot deal with removing ~/.cache at any point are simply faulty because at that point it is state and not cache which by definition can be recreated at the point of access.

[Oxodao]

That was a bit exaggerated I never clean fully the cache, mostly just specific apps but as long as I have everything closed (GUI and CLI apps), I don't really care what background services are doing and if they get upset because of this. I'm not on a server, that's my laptop so there is no critical stuff going on and once the app I use are closed that's good enough