[PATCH v2 2/2] basedir: Add XDG_BIN_HOME

[Josh Triplett]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2017 at 07:27:50PM +0200, Johannes Löthberg wrote:
> ---
> Dropped XDG_BIN_DIRS and add note about architecture-specificity of HOME 
> due to XDG_BIN_HOME.

This version of the proposal looks great to me, and thank you for
working on this.

Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett <josh at joshtriplett.org>

If this gets accepted, I would be happy to help work with various
projects to incorporate support for it. Unlike the other variables, I
think this only needs special support from software that *installs*
binaries to $XDG_BIN_HOME (falling back to ~/.local/bin), and not
software that just wants to access such files (for which it should use
$PATH).

I don't think this needs to be put in the standard, but people who want
to make $HOME less architecture-specific might want to set $XDG_BIN_HOME
to a path that includes the architecture triple, similar to multiarch
library paths.

>  basedir/basedir-spec.xml | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 28 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/basedir/basedir-spec.xml b/basedir/basedir-spec.xml
> index eefbe2b..9d001d8 100644
> --- a/basedir/basedir-spec.xml
> +++ b/basedir/basedir-spec.xml
> @@ -34,6 +34,15 @@
>            </address>
>          </affiliation>
>        </author>
> +      <author>
> +        <firstname>Johannes</firstname>
> +        <surname>Löthberg</surname>
> +        <affiliation>
> +          <address>
> +            <email>johannes at kyriasis.com</email>
> +          </address>
> +        </affiliation>
> +      </author>
>      </authorgroup>
>    </articleinfo>
>  
> @@ -66,6 +75,13 @@
>              environment variable <literal>$XDG_CONFIG_HOME</literal>.
>            </para>
>          </listitem>
> +        <listitem>
> +          <para>
> +            There is a single base directory relative to which user-specific
> +            executable files should be written. This directory is defined by the
> +            environment variable <literal>$XDG_BIN_HOME</literal>.
> +          </para>
> +        </listitem>
>          <listitem>
>            <para>
>              There is a set of preference ordered base directories relative to
> @@ -122,6 +138,18 @@
>        <literal>$XDG_CONFIG_HOME</literal> is either not set or empty, a default equal to
>        <literal>$HOME</literal>/.config should be used.
>      </para>
> +    <para>
> +      <literal>$XDG_BIN_HOME</literal> defines the base directory relative to
> +      which user-specific executable files should be stored. If
> +      <literal>$XDG_BIN_HOME</literal> is either not set or empty, a default equal to
> +      <literal>$HOME</literal>/.local/bin should be used.
> +    </para>
> +    <para>
> +      Since <literal>$HOME</literal> might be shared between systems of different achitectures,
> +      installing compiled binaries to <literal>$XDG_BIN_HOME</literal> could cause problems when
> +      used on systems of differing architectures. This is often not a problem, but the fact that
> +      <literal>$HOME</literal> becomes partially achitecture-specific should be kept in mind.
> +    </para>
>      <para>
>        <literal>$XDG_DATA_DIRS</literal> defines the preference-ordered set of
>        base directories to search for data files in addition to the
> -- 
> 2.14.1
>