I wholeheartedly agree with this blog post. I believe someone on here yesterday was asking about config file locations and setting them manually. This is in the same vein. I can’t tell you how many times a command line method for discovering the location of a config file would have saved me 30 minutes of googling.
If it’s not in /etc it should be in the directory the exe file is located.
~/.configis the non-root version of/etcthese days. But you just have to know that, which isn’t ideal.If you are a developer, please take a look at the XDG Base Directory Specification and try to follow it, users will be very grateful.
Short summary: Look for
$XDG_CONFIG_HOMEfor configs and$XDG_STATE_HOMEfor state. If they aren’t available, use the defaults (./configand.local/share).But what about .local/, or .appname/? It’s just a mess
~/.localis the non-root version of/usr. By.appnamedo you just mean a folder that a specific app made in your home for itself? Yeah, I never condone that. imo that’s just a badly behaving app. It should move that folder into~/.config.Is all of that defined in a standard somewhere?
I usually just use
$HOME/binand$HOME/optfor all my local user’s program needs, but would be interested if there is an actual defined standard for this.Configuration for
rootis in/root/, that is,root’s home directory./etcis for system configuration, different thing.Certainly not. Nothing should write to /usr/bin except for the package manager in FHS distros and some distros binary directories aren’t writable at all.
I agree. Usually I’m referring to a user installed local application. So if the executable is in your home directory likely it’s in the same directory as the exe.
Even then you shouldn’t be writing where the executable is. I don’t want spurious files where my scripts etc. are.
Just use XDG dirs.
Well good because a program shouldn’t be writing to its config file either.