0install/0install-win

Unexpected effects of setting XDG_CONFIG_HOME env to custom directory on Windows 10

Destroy666x opened this issue · 6 comments

Destroy666x commented

I set my %XDG_CONFIG_HOME% env to a dir on another disk on Windows 10 for backup purposes of apps like git, GitHub CLI, etc. It works fine for them.

However, after a bit I've noticed that:

  • 0install.net folder appeared there, not a big deal
  • DeepL app that uses this installer started throwing errors (Windows notifications) like Karma is signed with untrusted keys! or Feed https://appdownload.deepl.com/windows/0install/deepl.xml failed to download, when it's trying to look for updates or autoupdate, I presume

Is that intended? Is there anything I or the devs or DeepL can do to prevent these errors?

bastianeicher commented

Moving the contents of %APPDATA%\0install.net to %XDG_CONFIG_HOME%\0install.net, overwriting any files that are already there, should do the trick.

Destroy666x commented

Thanks, I'm trying that right now.

Is there no way to make the installer prefer %APPDATA% over %XDG_CONFIG_HOME% on Windows? Or maybe even %LOCALAPPDATA% since there doesn't seem to be anything that's suited for Roaming, just some app install related configs/databases that I'm not convinced you want to share between environments/machines.

bastianeicher commented

0install uses both %APPDATA% and %LOCALAPPDATA%:

  • %APPDATA%\0install.net holds config, list of trusted signatures, list of installed apps, etc.
  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\0install.net holds caches, binaries, etc..

If you roam your Windows profile to another machine, this allows 0install to still know which apps were installed in that profile, while re-downloading the app binaries only on-demand.
You can find more details in the docs.

Preferring XDG_CONFIG_HOME over APPDATA is intentional. Just like your use case with Git, users may wish to specify a custom location to store 0install config. XDG_CONFIG_HOME can be set for this purpose while APPDATA cannot be easily changed.

bastianeicher commented

In case you're curious, the code 0install uses for picking various directories on different platforms lives here.

Destroy666x commented

I see, I didn't notice any configs, maybe because I didn't configure anything, I just made an install of DeepL through choco. The on-demand download makes sense, too.

One last thing I'm confused about is why only half of the files were moved to newly set XDG_CONFIG_HOME and lack of moving the rest caused the errors. Shouldn't all of them be? Or I guess some were just created and none moved?

bastianeicher commented

I believe something roughly like this happened:

  1. You ran DeepLSetup.exe (via Chocolatey).
  2. DeepLSetup.exe internally used 0install to download and setup the DeepL app.
    For this, 0install:
    • recorded DeepL's OpenPGP key as trusted for appdownload.deepl.com in %appdata%\0install.net\injector\trustdb.xml
    • recorded the DeepL app as installed in %appdata%\0install.net\desktop-integration\app-list.xml
    • placed the DeepL App binaries in %localappdata%\0install.net\implementations
  3. You set %XDG_CONFIG_HOME% causing 0install to now look there instead of %appdata%.
  4. The next time 0install ran, it recreated its default (mostly empty) config files, now in %XDG_CONFIG_HOME%\0install.net.
  5. When checking for updates for DeepL, 0install no longer knew which OpenPGP key to trust, because the entry made by DeepLSetup.exe wasn't present in the new %XDG_CONFIG_HOME%\0install.net\injector\trustdb.xml. Therefore update checks failed, reporting untrusted keys.

If, e.g., on a different machine, you were to set XDG_CONFIG_HOME first and then install DeepL, I expect everything should work out of the box.

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