[systemd-devel] ~/.local/share/systemd/user

[Lennart Poettering]

On Sat, 07.06.14 07:42, William Giokas (1007380 at gmail.com) wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 07, 2014 at 01:07:08PM +0300, Tanu Kaskinen wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Currently, systemd symlinks ~/.local/share/systemd/user to
> > ~/.config/systemd/user. I'd prefer to not have that symlink. I'd want the
> > two locations have different semantics, analogous to the separation between
> > /usr/lib/systemd/user and /etc/systemd/user, i.e. service upstreams should
> > install units to ~/.local/share/systemd/user and users should customize in
> > ~/.config/systemd/user.
> 
> For me this is a directory, not a symlink.
> 
> > I suppose there are very few service upstreams that install their software
> > to the user home directory, but I happen to be writing such software myself.
> > My project is just a toy, though, but I think the general approach of
> > installing a user service to the user home directory makes sense, as it
> > avoids the need to have root access.
> > 
> > So, would a patch that removes the symlinking be accepted?
> 
> So for user services there are 3 directories that packages can be,
> checked in order:
> 
>   ~/.config/systemd/user
>   /etc/systemd/user/
>   /usr/lib/systemd/user
> 
> I don't see a reason to have a fourth one 'for packages' in a users home
> directory.

While that is what I thought too when I implemented the code for the
symlink, I come to disagree now.

~/.config is where user configuration shall be placed. It's
editable by the user. It corresponds with /etc on the system level

~/.local OTOH is where vendor data for additional packages installed by
the user can be placed, and where they should be picked up. It
corresponds with /usr on the system level.

~/.local should be considered mostly read-only, unless you actually
install or remove stuff. ~/.config is more frequently written to,
whenever the user actually wants to change configuration.

In a way, ~/.local is supposed to be the place where users can install
things into if they use "./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local" (which
doesn't really work too nicely for many other reasons, but you get the
idea).

Lennart

-- 
Lennart Poettering, Red Hat