XDG_DATA_HOME vs XDG_STATE_HOME usage

[Thiago Macieira]

On Monday, 12 September 2022 15:26:49 PDT Josef Šimánek wrote:
> Anyway, is that the decision maker for XDG_DATA_HOME vs
> XDG_STATE_HOME? Synced vs not synced between machines?

No. It should be about the nature of the data.

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/ar01s03.html says
"state data that should persist between (application) restarts, but that is 
not important or portable enough to the user that ..."

That is to say, if those files were lost, it wouldn't be the end of the world. 
The user may perceive some changes, but not anything that they themselves 
created.

That's again different from cache, which are files that should be periodically 
cleaned up. In my own system, I don't back up cache dirs, but I do back up 
state ones.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
   Software Architect - Intel DCAI Cloud Engineering