Location of home trash dir (Re: Trash spec 0.2, technical questions)

[Claes Holmerson]

On Thu, 2 Sep 2004, Alexander Larsson wrote:

> On Thu, 2004-09-02 at 15:42 +0200, Claes Holmerson wrote:

> > Hmm.. I can't really understand this argument. I thought the XDG Base
> > directory specification
> > (http://freedesktop.org/Standards/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-0.6.html) was
> > supposed to be built upon in other specifications developed at
> > freedesktop? Are not the environment variables defined there sensitive to
> > exactly the same problems as you describe here? I also thought that these
> > variables were supposed to be set at login, independent of the desktop
> > that is used, so it is not like they should be changed all the time...
>
> Its not exactly the same. For instance, with configuration files, the
> intent of setting an environment variable for them is probably to use
> another set of config files. However, is there ever a reason to use more
> than one trash?
>

I can't think of one, and perhaps I should clarify myself somewhat. The
reason I am suggesting the use of an environment variable is not that I
would like to change it, personally. I am happy with a fixed location, if
we can put it in a standardized location that is not directly below $HOME.
I would like to see that location share some of the same properties as
/var has.

Perhaps freedesktop can define a directory for this kind of use, and in
the long run things can be merged there. All in order to clean up the mess
we currently have.

So instead of $HOME/.Trash in this spec, $HOME/.Lock in some future
locking spec, $HOME/.log in yet another and a continued mess in $HOME, I
would like to see something like $HOME/.var/trash, $HOME/.var/lock and so
on.

I saw the basedir spec as a way to define a limited number of directories
in $HOME, where stuff like this can be stored. I thought $XDG_CACHE_HOME
was the closest, but it is not a perfect match so lets drop that
suggestion. Instead, perhaps $XDG_CACHE_HOME can default to
$HOME/.var/cache even?

Claes