Adding ~/.local/bin to default PATH

[Bernd Stramm]

On Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:54:09 +0200
Lennart Poettering <mzerqung at 0pointer.de> wrote:

> On Wed, 27.07.11 10:30, Karel Zak (kzak at redhat.com) wrote:
> 
> > > Note that there are a number of 3rd party projects making use of
> > > ~/.config/bin afaik, including jhbuild which installs its
> > > executable to that dir.
> > 
> >  It would be nice to clean up $HOME, radically reduce the number of
> >  the subdirectories and config files in the $HOME. If *all* the
> > garbage will be in ~/local/{etc,bin,lib,var/log} then nobody will
> > care if the directory is hidden. My wish is
> > 
> >   $ ls -ls ~/
> >   drwxrwxr-x. 31 kzak kzak   4096 Jul 26 15:54 .
> >   drwxrwxr-x. 13 kzak kzak   4096 Jul 26 15:49 ..
> >   drwxr-xr-x   2 kzak kzak   4096 Jul 26 15:54 local
> > 
> >  and nothing other, .mozilla, vimrc, bash_profile, .xsession-errors,
> >  etc. all could be in ~/local, but then the directory should be
> > really visible.
> 
> Well, for ~/.local we already have a spec and have had it since a
> couple of years, and it is implemented in KDE and in GNOME.
> 
> If you don't hide ~/.local and ~/.config then users who are less savvy
> than us might wonder what thzat stuff is and delete it and nothing
> will stop them and then all their configuration is lost.

Hiding configuration is one thing, hiding executables is another. Hiding
executables is a security risk, and should not be done just because 
a single person asked for it in a BZ.

> 
> I think the discussion where to place this is moot anyway, as the spec
> has been written years ago and widely (though not universally)
> implemented, and we should just stick to it, since where it to place
> it is nothing more than bike shedding anyway.

There are 173 hidden directories in my $HOME, none of which I put there
manually. 2 of these are .config and .local.

So I would say the spec is more widely ignored than it is being
implemented.

-- 
Bernd Stramm
bernd.stramm at gmail.com