Support XDG_RUNTIME_DIR being unset

[Pekka Paalanen]

On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 18:43:07 +0100
Emilio Pozuelo Monfort <pochu27 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 03/11/2013 06:12 PM, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> > On segunda-feira, 11 de março de 2013 17.10.53, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote:
> >> The XDG base directory specification[1] says that "If $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
> >> is not set applications should fall back to a replacement directory
> >> with similar capabilities and print a warning message."
> >>
> >> Currently we abort if XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set. The following patches
> >> fall back to ~/.cache, as GLib does.
> >
> > Which relevant and recent distribution does not set XDG_RUNTIME_DIR?
> 
> Debian doesn't by default (you can use systemd or upstart, but sysvinit is the 
> default init system). Probably others, as well as *BSDs (some people are 
> interested in porting wayland to them).
> 
> While it would be nice if sysvinit et al supported XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, and even 
> though I plan on switching to systemd, wayland is still not following the spec.

I think Wayland is following the spec the best it possibly can. You
can continue proposing new kinds of fallbacks, and we can see if
they fill the spec better. Anything short from creating a new mount
point and mounting a tmpfs in it will probably not be good enough.
And to mount a new tmpfs I think you need to be root. Also need to
implement the same fallback logic everywhere, since I don't think we
want Weston (or weston-launch, rather) to become a XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
provider. That would be the OS's responsibility.

I would be happy to be proven wrong in this, since it would make
also my life easier if we could sanely fall back.


Thanks,
pq