declutter-home

Disclaimer

This repository is bound to get outdated and have broken links as time goes on. I no longer engage in the work that will be highlighted below so I do not feel any need or responsibility to fix these. Moreover, I might not add new information to this repository but if you have any, or want to fix any broken links and outdated/mis- information, please send a patch to visuweshm [at] gmail [dot] com.

P.S. I am not responsible for any breakage whatsoever. You engaged in this madness by yourself.

Dotfiles—Origin and History

In an attempt to make ls not list “.” and “..” [1], a bug introduced the notion of hidden files (or “dotfiles”) which was subsequently abused by people and hence became a “feature”.

This misfeature was completely removed in Plan 9. Plan 9 follows a sane hierarchy and even has a XDG_CONFIGURATION_HOME/XDG_DATA_HOME like directory—~/lib.

Freedesktop’s XDG Environment Variables

Freedesktop defines numerous environment variables [2] that helps to keep the home directory organised and the data grouped in a hierarchy. Declaring them goes a long way in keeping the home directory tidy but some of the older software might/do not follow this.

The basic environmental variables are listed below for your convenience,

XDG_CACHE_HOME
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
XDG_DATA_HOME

Refer to [2] to learn what they mean.

Application-specific Environment Variables

As hinted in the previous section, some software do not follow the XDG convention. Some of these outliers have an environment variable or a flag that allows you to change the directory used to store the data. A table of known environment variable/flag is listed below.

Software	Environmental variable(s)	Flag(s)
dialog	DIALOGRC	-
dunst	-	-conf
GIMP	GIMP2_DIRECTORY	-
gnupg	GNUPGHOME	-
ksh (a)	ENV	-
less	LESSHISTFILE	-
mail	MAIL MAILRC	-
neovim (b)	NVIM_LOG_FILE	-
pass	PASSWORD_STORE_DIR	-
picom	-	–config
pulseaudio	PULSE_COOKIE	-
python	PYTHONPATH PYTHONUSERBASE	-
readline	INPUTRC	-
shell history	HISTFILE	-
sxhkd	-	-c
wget	-	–no-hsts –hsts-file
xauth	XAUTHORITY	-
xinit	XINITRC	-
zsh (c)	ZDOTDIR	-

a: MKSHRC_PATH can be changed during compile time to change the shellrc filename if you use mksh.
b: Nvim creates .nvimlog in the current directory by default.
c: Set it in /etc/zsh/zshenv [3].

If you are confused about all the files used by Xorg, consult https://nixers.net/showthread.php?tid=2271.

Workaround

If neither of the options are available, you can either try patching the software or writing a wrapper script that temporarily sets the HOME directory for the software. As an example, consider a script for Firefox,

#!/bin/sh

HOME=$HOME/firefox_junk firefox $@

Xfce apps ignores this. You have to launch xfconfd with the modified HOME directory; this is likely located at /lib/xfce4/xfconf/xfconfd.

Patches

If you find the workaround ugly, or if the software is resilient, you can try patching it. Patching usually requires a minimal working knowledge of the language used but for our purposes, familiarity with the shell should be enough.

An oversimplified outline of the process looks like,

% grep -R '\.software'
[output]
% sed 's|\.software|<your-desired-directory>|g' files

You might find some of my patches in https://github.com/vizs/ports useful.

Structure

To reduce chaos, you need structure but too rigid of a structure becomes a chore an annoyance [*] so some chaos is desirable. A vaguely organised home directory also helps you in writing scaleable scripts that analyse the directory structure to work. Pick something that works for you. No example will be provided since this is something that YOU have to decide for yourself.

[*] This is part of the reason why I do not follow the practises listed in the repository. At some point, it became a chore and I lost interest in maintaining a pristine home directory for the sake of internet points.

vizs/declutter-home