From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Cleaning up and structuring user-emacs-directory Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2020 23:09:16 -0400 Message-ID: References: <677E1813-9A0E-4127-9814-36CB9AB8B744@gmail.com> <871rk6uzbv.fsf@gnu.org> <87blj7jkg8.fsf@gnu.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="645"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: horrigmo@runbox.no, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Amin Bandali Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu Aug 20 05:10:37 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1k8ayL-000AcH-15 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 20 Aug 2020 05:10:37 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:38404 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1k8ayK-0007ie-3P for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Wed, 19 Aug 2020 23:10:36 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:49652) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1k8ax5-0006jd-M2 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 19 Aug 2020 23:09:19 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:33950) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1k8ax4-0001nR-ID; Wed, 19 Aug 2020 23:09:18 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1k8ax2-0002JC-K7; Wed, 19 Aug 2020 23:09:16 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87blj7jkg8.fsf@gnu.org> (message from Amin Bandali on Wed, 19 Aug 2020 01:03:51 -0400) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:254040 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > In short, the approach that I proposed divides up `user-emacs-directory' > into multiple subdirectories and keeps `user-emacs-directory' as the > all-in-one source of a user's Emacs files, while the XDG Base Directory > approach as suggested by Gunnar would imply keeping only configuration > files in `user-emacs-directory', and moving data and cache files to > "$XDG_DATA_HOME/emacs/" and "$XDG_CACHE_HOME/emacs/" respectively, where > 'XDG_DATA_HOME' defaults to "~/.local/share" and 'XDG_CACHE_HOME' to > "~/.cache". There is a benefit to putting all cache files in ~/.cache. For instance, you know where to find all the files you can safely delete, regardless of which program made them. What concretely are "data" files, for Emacs? I don't know where in the sources to look for that info. Can you mention a few examples and what data they contain? With specifics, we can see the concrete advantage of one choice or the other. With only the abstraction "data files", we can see only at the level of abstractions, and that is a sort of blindness that can lead to bad decisions. -- Dr Richard Stallman Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)