XDG Base Directory Conclusions [was Why .local/share ?]

[Orion White]

Damjan Jovanovic wrote:
>> I understand now that .local is a "local" representation of the
>> traditional FHS hierarchy. So that, for instance, is the place to do
>> private software installs. That addresses my original question about
>> .local/share (I'm happy about that!). But it raises another: Why .config
>> isn't .local/etc and .cache isn't .local/var/cache?
> 
> For the same reasons /etc isn't /usr/etc and /var/cache isn't /usr/cache.
> 
> ~/.local isn't the equivalent of /, it's the equivalent of /usr.

Or /usr/local. That makes sense. Thanks.

It's a difficult sell though, I think. I mean, this standard is fighting 
the tendency of developers to just use a single ~/.myapp/ directory; XDG 
is asking them to use ~/.local/share/myapp/? Two additional levels of 
hierarchy. As a developer myself, I hesitate to do this. I don't relish 
explaining this to my users. If I use the XDG standard at all, I'm more 
inclined not to use .local/, and just use ~/.cache/myapp/ and 
~/.config/myapp/, and not worry if I doing things exactly right.

T.