Respect XDG basedir specification on Linux systems #181
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So far, ImSwitch polluted users' home directory on Linux based operating systems. This commit handles ImSwitch related user files in an XDG compatible way: configs go to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and other (data) files go to $XDG_DATA_HOME. On other operating systems the 'ImSwitchConfig' folder will be created as before (except that it is now called 'ImSwitch') but will now contain subfolders; one for configs and another one for data. All occurences of 'UserFileDirs' were replaced by either 'UserConfigFileDirs' or 'UserDataFileDirs' according to the nature of the occurence. One could argue to introduce yet another folder for logs but this case is not clearly handled by the XDG spec so for now they go to the data folder. The function 'openUserDir()' now opens the config folder; this might need revision. Maybe another function/GUI element should be added to access the data folder.
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Hey @mgeismann, thanks for the contribution - awesome that you manage to investigate some stuff about ImSwitch for linux. I mostly use Windows myself so I didn't have the chance to deal with this. Just to be on the same page, you renamed the configuration folder in this PR from I'll try to find some time to review the PR in its entirety. |
| else: | ||
| # on any other OS put data and configs into same folder | ||
| if platform.system() == 'Windows': # Windows system, try to return documents directory | ||
| # TODO why would these files not go into .AppData\Roaming? |
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I personally prefer to keep these files into "Documents" because it's easier to access - especially if somebody wants to make a new configuration file for a new setup. At some point we will have to add a configuration manager to be able to build up your own setup from the GUI but right now it's best to keep the config folder in an easier spot to reach.
Yes, I renamed the folders because the XDG spec divides the files between data and config folders and the functions that retrieve the paths are unified this way. |
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Hi @mgeismann , is there any update on this? |
Hey, frankly: no. This got lost among other things. I have some time right now and will look into it and hopefully give you an update soon! |
os.path.expanduser() returns a string. The affected line of code assigns to a variable that is supposed to be a pathlib.Path and is later used with the '/' operator (in this case path concatenation) that strings do not support.
Commit message:
_So far, ImSwitch polluted users' home directory on Linux based operating systems. This commit handles ImSwitch related user files in an XDG compatible way: configs go to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and other (data) files go to $XDG_DATA_HOME.
On other operating systems the 'ImSwitchConfig' folder will be created as before (except that it is now called 'ImSwitch') but will now contain subfolders; one for configs and another one for data.
All occurences of 'UserFileDirs' were replaced by either 'UserConfigFileDirs' or 'UserDataFileDirs' according to the nature of the occurence. One could argue to introduce yet another folder for logs but this case is not clearly handled by the XDG spec so for now they go to the data folder.
The function 'openUserDir()' now opens the config folder; this might need revision. Maybe another function/GUI element should be added to access the data folder._
further comments
I only tested briefly when I made these changes. The branch was rebased on the current 'dev' branch, but were not tested again. So consider this work in progress.
In any case, I would love to hear your feedback!