keyist

Joined 18 years ago

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Targeted release: Fedora 19 - Replace MySQL with MariaDB fedoraproject.org

3 keyist 13 years ago 0 comments

How To Turn The Data From Any A/B Test Into A Real-Time Personalization Service evanmiller.org

2 keyist 14 years ago 0 comments

Postgres Backend Flowchart postgresql.org

2 keyist 14 years ago 0 comments

Comment · 14 years ago

I consider it good practice to allow users to customize where your program creates files. I don't like $HOME to be the default dumping ground for anything I run.

A standard that uses environment variables means programs don't have to provide extra options for this customization (I've seen -f,--file , -c,--config and other variants). It allows for common code (libraries that implement the spec).

If you poke around for feature requests for various open source programs, you'll find XDG basedir compliance come up occasionally (moreso for CLI utils). I wouldn't say "nobody seems to be using it"; quick scan of my folders includes Chromium, uzbl, htop. Git's next release will be compliant too.

Comment · 14 years ago

Instead of putting a dotfile or dotdir in the user's home directory, do follow the XDG Base Directory specification: http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-l... .

It's easy to understand and requires only a marginal increase in effort/code.