Heads-up: Linux make menuconfig .config vs. XDG_CONFIG_HOME ~/.config/ clash - perhaps resolve it while 3.0 appears?

From: Andreas Mohr <andi@lisas.de>
To: linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	Roman Zippel <zippel@linux-m68k.org>,
	Michal Marek <mmarek@suse.cz>, Waldo Bastian <bastian@kde.org>,
	Ryan Lortie <desrt@desrt.ca>,
	Lennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Heads-up: Linux make menuconfig .config vs. XDG_CONFIG_HOME ~/.config/ clash - perhaps resolve it while 3.0 appears?
Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2011 20:24:31 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20110602182431.GA26282@rhlx01.hs-esslingen.de> (raw)

Hello all,

I just discovered a Linux kernel make menuconfig .config file
accidentally situated in the home directory of a shell account
(simply scp:d over without much thought, thus directly ending up in main
user home on that machine, something which can happen quite easily
for a number of other reasons as well).
I then realized the potentially fatal ramifications of this.

XXXXXX:/tmp$ touch mytest
XXXXXX:/tmp$ mkdir mytest
mkdir: cannot create directory `mytest': File exists

XDG Base Directory Specification
  http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
says:

"$XDG_CONFIG_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user
specific configuration files should be stored. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is
either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.config should be
used."
And that mechanism is exactly what a ton of Linux userspace apps
(and hopefully many more in future) are already making use of
to store their configuration data in a manner
that's more friendly to user home directories.

It may thus be strongly advisable to rename the default name of the
make menuconfig kernel .config file (perhaps .config_lx / .config_linux ?)
to completely sidestep such a (mostly user-triggered)
problematic clash in future.

And (I cannot help but think of this) now that lx 3.0 is in -rc
this might still be an especially appropriate moment to do it ;)
(one would have to think of potential compatibility issues though)

Thanks for listening,

Andreas Mohr