Finding where to store application data portably

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:09:28 +0400, en.karpachov wrote:

> There is an other way around: look at your home dir as if it is your
> "settings" dir and don't clutter it with files other than application
> config dot-files.  Just make ~/files/, ~/bin/ ~/lib/ etc. for it.

Do you put everything into /etc (/etc/bin, /etc/var, /etc/usr, /etc/mnt,
and so forth)? If your home directory is for settings, why would you store
files and binaries inside your settings directory?

I understand the historical reasons for why ~/ is treated as a
structureless grab-bag of everything and anything. That made sense back in
the distant past when users used dumb terminals and they had perhaps half
a dozen dot files. But at the point your home directory has three times as
many dot files as regular files, the time has come to stop doing things
just because that's the way they have always been done.



-- 
Steven.