[sakjur]

> But suppose we accept that the XDG specification only applies to some Unix operating systems, despite making no mention of this.

the very first paragraphs on specifications.freedesktop.org says this:

> Freedesktop.org is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. > We are not a formal standards body. The standards published on these pages are active or tentative (if marked as such) specifications which desktop environments may implement to improve mutual compatibility, share code and pool resources.

Deferring to XDG_CONFIG_HOME on MacOS if it exists makes a lot of sense as it conveys a clear intent from the user and the convention has grown popular. I’m not sure that the default ~/.config from the XDG specification is automatically better than ~/Library/Application Support by appeal to freedesktop.org’s authority.

And please don’t move configuration files around between releases without really being intentional about it.

[pasc1878]

the XDG_CONFIG_HOME should point to ~/Library/Preferences.

The issue is that often everyone assumes that XDG_CONFIG_HOME is ~/.config

The idea of having a variable is that it could be anywhere,

[Ferret7446]

XDG_CONFIG_HOME points to wherever you set it; that is up to the user to decide.

The default value, when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, is by specification ~/.config. It does not (and should not) default to a different value on OSX.

[pasc1878]

Why should it not. The easier case for me to defend is XDG_CACHE_HOME - if it defaults to ~/.Library/Caches then it makes life simpler on macOS as it means that you don't have to add other directories to be removed from your backups.

[notpushkin]

Regardless of the default value, I think we can all agree that supporting XDG_* would be a good start!

[naikrovek]

why are they named XDG_* like XDG_CONFIG_DIR?

Why not just CONFIG_DIR?

Doesn't matter. This whole situation is a mess, and it's still a mess in the year 2025. Clearly existing operating systems can't be changed significantly enough to change anything like this.

but we're all still afraid to write new operating systems. We cling to MacOS, FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows as if our lives depend on it. Our lives do not depend on it.

If we want a saner OS, we could have it, but we don't want it bad enough, I think. It's easier to just deal with the piles of horse manure that has been piled on top of everything. So we have a rather active bikeshed discussion on HN about whether or not to use XDG_*.

We want to bikeshed more than we want to fix anything. Like all communities, this one also disappoints me.

[koakuma-chan]

Can't you just std::env::var it? Why need a library? It's not even set on my MacBook though.

[notpushkin]

Yeah, the variable is usually unset, so you’ll want to have a default value in your code. Basically something like

  config_dir="${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-$HOME/.config}/my-app"

Of course, if you decide to account for Windows / macOS conventions, it’ll be a bit trickier, but pulling in a library for that is a bit overkill, yeah.