On Jan 16, 2011, at 8:41 AM, Geert Janssens wrote: > On Sunday 16 January 2011, John Ralls wrote: >> On Jan 16, 2011, at 7:19 AM, Geert Janssens wrote: >>> Historically, GnuCash has always stored its user specific application >>> data in ~/.gnucash based on old linux (unix ?) conventions. >>> >>> This didn't work really well on Mac OS X/Quartz, so John has overridden >>> this path on OS X to make more sense there. >>> >>> Now there's a bugreport that indicates this isn't the best place on >>> Windows either [1]. >>> >>> I could override the path on Windows as well and be done with it, but in >>> my investigation I found that even on linux ~/.<appname> is no longer >>> the recommended place to store such information. >>> >>> According to the XDG Base Directory Specification [2] the preferred >>> location is ~/.local/share/<appname>. >>> >>> The nice thing is, glib has a convenience function g_get_user_config_dir, >>> which by default returns ~/.local/share on linux and the equivalent and >>> proper ~\Application Data (Windows XP) or ~\AppData\Roaming (Windows >>> Vista/7). >>> >>> I don't know what this routine returns on OS X, but I would expect it to >>> return the proper location for user specific application data there as >>> well. If not that should be reported as a bug againse glib on OS X. >>> >>> In this light I would like to update the GnuCash code to make use of the >>> g_get_user_data_dir function on all platforms and rename the directory >>> from .gnucash to gnucash. That would give a better experience on all >>> platforms IMO. This is what the directories would become: >>> - Linux: ~/.local/share/gnucash >>> - Windows XP: c:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\gnucash >>> - Windows Vista/7: c:\Documents and >>> Settings\<user>\AppData\Roaming\gnucash - OS X: ? >>> >>> I would obviously have to provide some conversion code as well, that >>> would copy the old .gnucash contents to .local/share/gnucash to >>> guarantee continuity for the users. >>> >>> I also think this change may be better for 2.5/2.6 than 2.4.1. >>> >>> Does anyone have any objections to this ? >> >> You must have $XDG_CONFIG_HOME set on your Linux system. If that's not set, >> then g_get_user_config_dir returns $HOME/.config., which if everyone used >> it would be an improvement over littering $HOME with hidden directories. > > Oops, I mixed those up yes. g_get_user_config_dir defaults to $HOME/.config, > g_get_user_data_dir defaults to $HOME/.local/share. > > The problem with the latter is that g_get_user_data_dir on Windows is equal > to > g_get_home_dir. So using that on Windows just doesn't change anything to what > we have now. > >> Not everybody uses it, though. In fact, on my Debian Lenny VM, >> ~/.local/share contains one subdirectory, "Trash", and ~/.config contains >> two, "gtk+-2.0" and "enchant". AQBanking and GConf each have their own >> hidden directories. Admittedly, I have that VM set up with KDE, and I use >> it only for development so there aren't a lot of applications on it. >> > On my systems (currently Fedora 13 and 14) which I use as primary desktops, > both .config and .local/share hold data for 10-30 applications. Some are KDE > some are Gnome. I also know Gnome has made it a GnomeGoal to have all of its > applications use these directories. So at least for Gnome, this seems to be > the way to go in the future. > >> I think it makes more sense to lift get_special_folder(int) from >> glib/gutils.c, use that to set the directory on win32, and to leave the >> rest alone... but the change is mostly harmless (you'll need to look for >> ~/.gnucash and copy it over, and maybe ask the user if she wants to delete >> the old location), so if you really want to do it I have no objections. >> I'll just change GNC_DOT_DIR to XDG_CONFIG_HOME in the OSX launcher >> script. >> > I presume you mean to make this change after I have made the changes to use > g_get_user_config_dir ?
Yes, of course. Regards, John Ralls _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
