zlacker

>>csmant+(OP)
Does anyone know why, when Lennart and friends wrote their XDG Base Directory Specification, they decided that each user should replicate /usr/local/ subdirectories under $HOME/.local/?

Doesn't being under $HOME make .local redundant? I guess one could argue for binaries going in an architecture-specific subdirectory if $HOME was on a shared filesystem, but that's not what's being done here.

To me, $HOME/.local/share and its siblings are just a needless level of indirection, forcing me to jump through an extra hoop every time I want to access what's in there.

(I know it's sometimes possible to override it with an environment variable, but the predictably spotty support for those overrides means I would then have to look for things in two places. I think sensible defaults would be nicer.)

>>forest+WR
The ~/.local prefix is so that you don't pollute the home directory too much.

>>171862+Bs2
That doesn't align with their choice of $HOME/.cache (to which users need to navigate much less frequently than $HOME/.local/share), nor with how few items $HOME/.local typically saves from landing in $HOME, nor with the normally hidden state of everything starting with a dot.

So if that was their reasoning, it reinforces my view that they didn't think their design through very well.