From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752780Ab1FCPHk (ORCPT ); Fri, 3 Jun 2011 11:07:40 -0400 Received: from mail.elliptictech.com ([209.217.122.41]:33813 "EHLO mail.ellipticsemi.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750926Ab1FCPHi (ORCPT ); Fri, 3 Jun 2011 11:07:38 -0400 X-Greylist: delayed 1731 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Fri, 03 Jun 2011 11:07:38 EDT Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 10:38:24 -0400 From: Nick Bowler To: Andreas Mohr Cc: linux-kbuild@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Roman Zippel , Michal Marek , Waldo Bastian , Ryan Lortie , Lennart Poettering , Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: Heads-up: Linux make menuconfig .config vs. XDG_CONFIG_HOME ~/.config/ clash - perhaps resolve it while 3.0 appears? Message-ID: <20110603143824.GA3138@elliptictech.com> References: <20110602182431.GA26282@rhlx01.hs-esslingen.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20110602182431.GA26282@rhlx01.hs-esslingen.de> Organization: Elliptic Technologies Inc. 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 On 2011-06-02 20:24 +0200, Andreas Mohr wrote: > "$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." [...] > 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. If a program can't create its config directory or file(s), presumably it will display an error message to that effect and the user can correct the problem: after all, this scenario only occurs when the user puts a kernel .config file in their home directory. I imagine that a user which is capable of doing such a thing is also capable of deleting files. Furthermore, Once the ~/.config directory has been created (by running any program that does so), this problem cannot occur. There are many other reasons that a program might fail to access its configuration data. I suspect that "no space remaining" or "read-only filesystem" are more likely than "oops, I managed to put a .config file in my home directory before running a single program that created ~/.config/". Administrators can prevent hapless users from accidentally putting a .config file in their home directory by creating a .config directory by default. Distros could help here by putting an empty .config directory in /etc/skel. Renaming the .config file is obviously going to cause a lot of pain, and there seems to be very little gain. Cheers, -- Nick Bowler, Elliptic Technologies (http://www.elliptictech.com/)