From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754508Ab1FBSdH (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Jun 2011 14:33:07 -0400 Received: from rhlx01.hs-esslingen.de ([129.143.116.10]:59646 "EHLO rhlx01.hs-esslingen.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752317Ab1FBSdF (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Jun 2011 14:33:05 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 512 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:33:05 EDT Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2011 20:24:31 +0200 From: Andreas Mohr To: linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Roman Zippel , Michal Marek , Waldo Bastian , Ryan Lortie , Lennart Poettering , Linus Torvalds Subject: Heads-up: Linux make menuconfig .config vs. XDG_CONFIG_HOME ~/.config/ clash - perhaps resolve it while 3.0 appears? Message-ID: <20110602182431.GA26282@rhlx01.hs-esslingen.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline X-Priority: none User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org 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