[pseudalopex]

> It stinks even worse with the half-adoption state we are in now, with some apps writing to those directories and other apps not.

It stinks about half as much as before.

> Part of the spec stinks, too, like the spit between cache/config/data config where the spec has no written rules specified on when anything is expected to be cleaned up and when or what can or should be backed up by the user.

Caches don't have to be backed up and can be deleted if you need space. Most people will want to back up configs. What other data should be backed up is a question different people will answer differently. And containers don't solve this.

[immibis]

I actually back up my Gradle cache in particular because things have a tendency to disappear from the internet sometimes, and permanently break builds of older stuff.

[thesnide]

That stuff that disappears, do you have means to patch and rebuild it?

Otherwise, you're directly heading for a nasty surprise at the worst moment.

[immibis]

The build dependencies are the problem. The build process downloads them from hardcoded internet URLs and they are cached for 30 days. By backing up the cache, I can (probably) rummage around it later to find anything that's been deleted from the internet.