Parse ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs file
mateusz834 opened this issue · 7 comments
I am testing this library using fedora and arch Linux and it seems like none of the distributions are setting the env vars for XDG User Directories.
[a@localhost-live test]$ cat /home/a/.config/user-dirs.dirs
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run.
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Pulpit"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Pobrane"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Szablony"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Publiczny"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Dokumenty"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Muzyka"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Obrazy"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Wideo"
[a@localhost-live test]$ ./main
2022/02/04 18:14:32 Desktop directory: /home/a/Desktop
2022/02/04 18:14:32 Download directory: /home/a/Downloads
2022/02/04 18:14:32 Documents directory: /home/a/Documents
2022/02/04 18:14:32 Music directory: /home/a/Music
2022/02/04 18:14:32 Pictures directory: /home/a/Pictures
2022/02/04 18:14:32 Videos directory: /home/a/Videos
2022/02/04 18:14:32 Templates directory: /home/a/Templates
2022/02/04 18:14:32 Public directory: /home/a/Public
Firefox for example reads the ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs directly.
[a@localhost-live test]$ cat firefox-strace | grep .config/user-dirs
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/a/.config/user-dirs.dirs", O_RDONLY) = 53
Also it looks like XDG_*_DIR env vars do not override the user-dirs.dirs file, checked in firefox/chromium
const (
envDesktopDir = "XDG_DESKTOP_DIR"
envDownloadDir = "XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR"
envDocumentsDir = "XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR"
envMusicDir = "XDG_MUSIC_DIR"
envPicturesDir = "XDG_PICTURES_DIR"
envVideosDir = "XDG_VIDEOS_DIR"
envTemplatesDir = "XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR"
envPublicShareDir = "XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR"
)
Hi @mateusz834. Thank you for your interest in the library. Reading user-dirs.dirs is already a task in my to-do list.
I'll start working on this. Hopefully, I can release a new version sometime next week (depending on my free time).
Also it looks like XDG_*_DIR env vars do not override the user-dirs.dirs file, checked in firefox/chromium
Yeah, that seems to be the case. I think the priority to should be:
user-dirs.dirs values > environment variables > defaults
It even look like that env vars are completely ignored by firefox/chromium.
I removed the user-dirs.dirs file and set the XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR env var to a different directory and the downloaded file was saved in the default directory.
But for backwards compatibility I think that the order should be:
environment variables > user-dirs.dirs values > defaults
Maybe someone is relying on the env vars now and after the change it will suddenly use values from user-dirs.dirs??
Ideally, there would be no breaking changes. I try to steer clear of them as much as possible. However, in this case, I think the default behavior going forward should be to rely on the values provided by user-dirs.dirs, then fall back to other sources.
I made a quick search through GitHub and it seems most people are using this package for base directories rather than user directories. I think very few people customize user directory environment variables anyway, especially if they're ignored by other applications. In any case, the change will be documented in the release notes.
Alternatively, I could introduce an option to control whether user-dirs.dirs has priority. However, I think it clutters the package interface unnecessarily.
Any updates on this? I recently found this library and I guess I'm one of the edge cases that need the parsing of user-dirs.dirs.
You may be looking for this?
USER-DIRS.CONF(5) File Formats USER-DIRS.CONF(5)
NAME
user-dirs.conf - configuration for xdg-user-dirs-update
DESCRIPTION
The /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf file is a text file that controls the behavior of the xdg-user-dirs-update
command. Users can have their own ~/.config/user-dirs.conf file, which overrides the system-wide
configuration.
The following keys are recognised:
enabled=boolean
When set to False, xdg-user-dirs-update will not change the XDG user dirs configuration.
filename_encoding=encoding
This sets the filename encoding to use. encoding can be an explicit encoding name, such as UTF-8,
or "locale", which means the encoding of the users locale will be used.
Lines beginning with a # character are ignored.
ENVIRONMENT
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
The system-wide user-dirs.conf file is located in this directory. The default is /etc/xdg.
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
The per-user user-dirs.conf file is located in this directory. The default is $HOME/.config.
SEE ALSO
xdg-user-dirs-update(1)
XDG