Firefox 147 Will Support The XDG Base Directory Specification (phoronix.com)
- Reference: 0180172921
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/11/21/2212216/firefox-147-will-support-the-xdg-base-directory-specification
- Source link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-147-XDG-Base-Directory
> A 21 year old bug report requesting [1]support of the XDG Base Directory specification is [2]finally being addressed by Firefox . The Firefox 147 release should respect this XDG specification around where files should be positioned within Linux users' home directory.
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> The XDG Base Directory [3]specification lays out where application data files, configuration files, cached assets, and other files and file formats should be positioned within a user's home directory and the XDG environment variables for accessing those locations. To date Firefox has just positioned all files under ~/.mozilla rather than the likes of ~/.config and ~/.local/share.
[1] https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/8a6d6c094cb5
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Firefox-147-XDG-Base-Directory
[3] https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir/latest/
Re: I can see why they ignored it for so long. (Score:2)
Uhh, except that on macOS, to implement XDG youâ(TM)d set the config directory to ~/Library/Preferences, and the state directory to ~/Library/Application\ Support, so⦠if you think their implementation is good, then thereâ(TM)s no problem having multiple locations to put the data.
Need isolated installations + self contaiment (Score:2)
Maybe maybe someone will give individual applications fully isolated file system locations, internet networking open ports, limited access to system services, ....
There's containers and BSD Jail type of isolation, but that is not be default.....(looking at Windows here)
~/.mozilla is convenient (Score:2)
It's easy to back up or transfer a complete Firefox setup. Just rsync ~/.mozilla and you're done.
Or just delete ~/.mozilla if you want to start "fresh".
Spreading things out all over the place won't serve any purpose I can see other than making it more complex to manage.
Re: ~/.mozilla is convenient (Score:2)
It's also really easy to miss the .mozilla dir when making a backup cause it's in a different place than everything else.
Re: (Score:2)
It's really easy to backup/put in version control/rsync/stow/chezomoi etc ~/.config and then you get the benefits for all the XDG-compliant software you use, instead of just one non-compliant piece.
And you can still do what you did before by inserting "~/.config" into your previous commands.
I'm a Mac user and I've switched to XDG paths where possible, coupled with chezmoi and Ansible to get the same setup on my primary Mac and secondary Linux VMs/SBCs. Way easier than searching around the disk for each piec
Not "all" (Score:3)
> "To date Firefox has just positioned all files under ~/.mozilla rather than the likes of ~/.config and ~/.local/share.
That is not technically correct. They have been using ~/.cache correctly for a very long time. So it is not *all* files. But it is true the other files have been in ~/.mozilla. I manage an ACTUAL multiuser system (something you rarely see today; yes, hundreds of different users each often running Firefox on that one machine), and even I don't care much that it is ~/.mozilla instead of ~/.config/.mozilla, but I will have to adjust a lot of scripts.
.mozilla is a better solution (Score:2)
Apps should keep their files in their own directories. Spreading them across a 1000 different directories makes no sense and just make uninstall a hassle
Re: (Score:3)
> "Apps should keep their files in their own directories. Spreading them across a 1000 different directories makes no sense and just make uninstall a hassle"
It will still be in its own directory. Just in ~/.config/mozilla instead of ~/.mozilla
For example, LibreOffice stores its settings in ~/.config/libreoffice, GIMP is in ~/.config/GIMP, Thunar is in ~/.config/Thunar, VLC is in ~/.config/vlc, etc...
CORRECTION (Score:2)
"Linux" appears ZERO times in the specification.
This is a specification for UNIX. Linux copied from UNIX but is not UNIX. If you'd like to try out a UNIX variant however, the BSDs such as FreeBSD are direct descendants of AT&T Research UNIX.
INB4 "But Linux is more popular" - yes, yes it is, and it is because of EXACTLY things like this, which attribute things to Linux which are NOT Linux and don't mention Linux at all.
Re: (Score:2)
> "Linux" appears ZERO times in the specification."
And yet, 99% of who this change will affect will likely be Linux users. MacOS mostly doesn't really even use ~/.config, because, well, "Apple".
> "This is a specification for UNIX. Linux copied from UNIX but is not UNIX."
If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it is probably a duck. Linux is Unix, in all ways that matter to anyone now (and for a long time before now). Worrying about exact Linux vs Unix vs UNIX vs Unix-like vs BSD vs POSIX is k
Re: CORRECTION (Score:2)
More than 1% of the people affected are likely on Mac, which IS UNIX.
Re: (Score:2)
As I already said in the previous post:
"MacOS mostly doesn't really even use ~/.config, because, well, "Apple".
We don't know if Mozilla will do that on MacOS, which does not follow all Unix conventions. Especially desktop ones, of which this is.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedesktop.org
Shocking. (Score:3)
Great to hear, maybe now they can look at some of the other 15+ year old bugs they have been ignoring (except when they want to close a new report as a dupe, of course).
Re: (Score:2)
Supporting someone else's desired feature is not a bug. If there's 15 year old bugs, quite possibly no one gives a shit about them. Have you considered contributing to the project?
Re: Shocking. (Score:2)
Reporting bugs is literally a way people who are not software developers can contribute to open source software.
Are you saying only issues reported by coders deserve any attention? Because that sounds a bit antithetical if you're marketing your product to everyday people, as Mozilla does.