Is there a way to detect if the System is XDG independently of the environment variables?

[Jesús Gómez]

I'm going to make a claim.

""" Your process runs in a system following XDG if the environment variable
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is defined OR the folder /etc/xdg exists.  """

Two things are essential to make that claim.  The name of the folder uses
the term `xdg`.  This is different than the rules mentioning `/usr/share`
or the folders at $HOME (e.g. $HOME/.config) in 2 aspects: 1, folders like
`/usr/share` are not unique to systems following the XDG convention; 2, the
folders at $HOME could not exists at first, and still be in a system
following the conventions and so, the process could create those folders in
the first place.

A test like this (if the assumptions I made are valid) could be used by
applications like Clojure (my current interest) to switch between
supporting or not XDG.

But first, I would like to verify that this claim makes sense to you. I
would appreciate any feedback you can give me.


El vie, 29 mar 2024 a la(s) 2:48 p.m., Jesús Gómez (jgomo3 at gmail.com)
escribió:

> Hi.
>
> I understand that the XDG_* environment variables are options for the
> users to customize their system, but the lack of them doesn't mean that the
> system is not following XDG.
>
> I've been thinking about this, and the more I read the specifications, it
> seems to me that "Systems" don't have that responsibility and it is just an
> decision of the applications to follow the specifications or not.
>
> I'm thinking this because of the Clojure CLI tool.  I've been discussing
> about this with the maintainers and there are 2 options:
>
> 1. Or Clojure could detect that the system is following the XDG
> specifications (even when no XDG environment variables are in place).
> 2. Define a flag at any time (installation, execution, packaging, etc., I
> think they will decide that part) for following these specs.
>
> I think the more probable path is the flag, and it corresponds with the
> idea that the System doesn't have a responsibility to express whether it
> follows or not the specifications; but still, given only curiosity, I would
> still like to know if the Systems can publish that or if an application can
> detect that.
>
> Thank you!
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xdg/attachments/20240410/af8f5e82/attachment.htm>