[RFC] XDG_RUNTIME_DIR

[Ryan Lortie]

hi Kevin,

Thanks for your comments.

On Sun, 2010-11-07 at 16:15 +0100, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> Maybe XDG_RUNTIME_HOME, since all other user specific directory variables in 
> the spec are suffixed with _HOME?

All of the other home directories are part of the user's home directory
(at least by default).  This is specifically not.

> What if the system resumes from suspend after 12 hours and the OS job to clean 
> the directory is executed before any of the apps had a chance to update mtime?

Good point.  We could specify 6/12 hours as measured by the monotonic
clock except that file timestamps are in real time.  This is tricky...

> > - Applications making use of this feature which do not find
> > $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR to be set, should fall back to some other directory
> > providing similar capabilities, and print a warning.

Any case where the application is issuing a warning message to stderr is
really a case where something needs to be fixed.  It's not possible
(without very large amounts of effort) to get the properties of this
directory without "outside help" -- which is precisely why we need this
spec in the first place.  The only reason that I favour returning "some
other directory" in glib is to prevent programmers from checking for
failure.  The environment variable *really should* be set.

Cheers