Mildly Infuriating @lemmy.world Magnetic_dud @discuss.tchncs.de 1d ago

Developers: "Yes, the users love cluttered homes, just put everything there and ignore guidelines"

AppData folder: am I a joke to you?

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Everyone here is talking about conventions used on Linux, but this looks like Windows Explorer to me...?
Why are there so many directory names in there following Linux "hidden file" conventions, if that's the case?
- If you write cross-platform software, the easiest solution is usually to pretend everything's Unix. You'll hit some problems (e.g. assuming all filesystem APIs always use UTF-8 will bite you on Windows, which switched to UCS2 before UTF-8 or UTF-16 were invented, so now uses UTF-16 for Unicode-aware functions as that's the one that's ABI compatible with UCS2, and passing UTF-8 to the eight-bit-char functions requires you to opt into that mode explicitly), but mostly everything will just work. There's no XDG_CONFIG telling you to put these files anywhere in particular, as Windows is Windows, so most things use ~ as a fallback, which Windows knows to treat as %USERPROFILE%.
  
  Lots of frameworks for applications and games have automatic translation of file paths to sensible directories, but when you're writing software you're probably doing shit fast and dirty until it's ready for release, by that time you now have a bunch of people relying on your software so changing the file structure will cause loads of issues.
- This is not a Linux or Windows thing. It's a lazy developer thing. It's also another one of the ways that some devs will coddle the end-user because "learning a file directory system is hard."
  
  I'm pretty sure the .file notation is a bug-turned-feature of a GNU coreutils program, Windows has no such thing and marks files as hidden using filesystem attributes.
  
  I couldn't say whether I prefer it one way or the other, but the dot prefix does stick out like a sore thumb on systems that don't hide them by default... though I think AnyOldName3's explaination makes sense.
  
  for someone regularly using both: it is a convenience feature.
  
  that way i just know config files are under ~/.myApp. if windows devs would beore consistent, i would be ok with %APPDATA%\myApp. however, too often it is under %APPDATA%\..\Roaming\myApp - which is just a pain. so i prefere linux style on windows.
  
  edit: copy paste error
  
  I see your point, but as someone who prefers my home folder be my home folder, I prefer they put it under ~/.config regardless of what operating system is being used.
  
  yes, i could get behind that. problem is probably that this is such wide spread by now, that it would take a really long time to use that new standard.
  
  Roaming and local are there for reasons.
  
  Mostly enterprisey ones, but roaming “roams” with your user profile.
  
  If you have ever used a system where you could sign onto any computer and your stuff would be there, it’s mostly due to roaming folder.
  
  Local is local to the pc and does not roam to others
  
  I think you meant %LOCALAPPDATA%
  
  %APPDATA% points to roaming

76 comments