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All programs should tell you where they store config files (utcc.utoronto.ca)

submitted 2 years ago by wet_lettuce@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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I wholeheartedly agree with this blog post. I believe someone on here yesterday was asking about config file locations and setting them manually. This is in the same vein. I can't tell you how many times a command line method for discovering the location of a config file would have saved me 30 minutes of googling.

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[–] SocialJusticeHeals@mastodon.social 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

@wet_lettuce
Should be /etc or /usr/local/etc or /opt/etc or /opt/vendor/product/etc or ~/etc.

With some exceptions for historic compatibility (like ~/.bashrc)

The man page should specify where.

[–] dan@upvote.au 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

For user-specific config files, aren't they all supposed to be in ~/.config these days? I've never heard of software using ~/etc.

[–] SocialJusticeHeals@mastodon.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@dan
If you do

./configure --prefix="$HOME" \
&& make && make test && make install

then you typically get ~/etc for the config files (and binaries in ~/bin)

~/.config is not part of any posix or Un*x standard I know of.

Some desktop environments do use it, but not because of any standard I am aware of.

[–] dan@upvote.au 1 points 2 years ago

~/.config is not part of any posix or Un*x standard I know of.

I wasn't sure if it's a standard or not, but a bunch of stuff store config files there. At least on one of my command-line-only systems, I see configs for htop, NuGet, ookla speedtest, PowerShell, rclone, and borgbackup in there, as well as an empty procps directory. Apparently it's part of the XDG standard, but it seems like a decent number of non-desktop apps use it too.

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