Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.11
Severity: wishlist
There was a suggestion in #d-mentors about Lintian supporting the XDG
specification for data files and config files[1]. The main argument
was (AFAICT) to avoid cluttering $HOME with dot files. Personally, I
have no strong feelings either way. Only that if we do this, we should
do it before releasing 2.5.12[2].
A quick summary, XDG defines 4 types paths:
* config (lintianrc)
* data (profiles/, data/, vendors/, lib/, checks/)
* cache (not relevant to lintian)
* runtime dir (... also not relevant, unless "lintiand" becomes a thing)
The files/dirs listed in parentheses are the files/dirs /I/ believe
falls into the given category.
For comparison, here are the default search paths:
* lintianrc (ignoring $LINTIAN_ROOT/lintianrc for a moment):
NOW: $HOME/.lintian/rc:/etc/lintianrc
XDG: $HOME/.config/lintianrc:/etc/xdg/lintianrc
* user/sys data (profiles, vendor data files etc.):
NOW: $HOME/.lintian/<DIR>:/etc/lintian/<DIR>:/usr/share/lintian/<DIR>
XDG: $HOME/.local/share/lintian/<DIR>:/usr/local/share/lintian/<DIR>:\
/usr/share/lintian/<DIR>
Note the lintianrc file currently is special cased to prefer
$LINTIAN_ROOT/lintianrc above all other paths. It seems a bit weird,
but I suspect it was once relevant for the reporting on lintian.d.o
(it isn't anymore AFAICT[3]).
To be honest, I would be in favour of simply removing the
LINTIAN_ROOT/lintianrc case unless there is still a use for it, which
I simply missed (regardless of whether we adopt XDG or not).
There are also a couple of cases/ cmd options to consider though:
* --include-dir <dir>
- I suggest inserting <dir> between the $HOME/.local/share and
/usr/local/share/lintian
* --no-user-dirs
- Ignore all XDG specified directories and only use $LINTIAN_ROOT plus
"--include-dir"-directories.
* --cfg, --no-cfg (and LINTIAN_CFG)
- Unchanged (i.e. overrule the search dirs).
* LINTIAN_ROOT vs XDG_DATA_DIRS
- Current LINTIAN_ROOT is always last in the search dir. I have no
intention of changing that. Though with $XDG_DATA_DIRS,
/usr/share/lintian could appear earlier than last. I suggest we
handle that XDG_DATA_DIRS similar to dirs passed via --include-dirs
... and finally, time for the big pink elephant in the corner,
backwards compatibility. At the very least, we should stil check
~/.lintianrc and /etc/lintianrc as they are widely used now. I am not
too sure how "used" ~/.lintian and /etc/lintian are - though keeping
it will probably not be a huge headache for now.
Including compatibility, I envision we have the following search path
for config files:
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lintianrc
(default: $HOME/.config/lintianrc)
$HOME/.lintianrc *
$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/lintianrc (shipped conffile)
(default: /etc/xdg/lintianrc)
/etc/lintianrc *
... and for "data":
$XDG_DATA_HOME/lintian
(default: $HOME/.local/share/lintian)
$HOME/.lintian *
/etc/lintian *
$XDG_DATA_DIRS/lintian
(default: /usr/local/share/lintian:/usr/share/lintian)
LINTIAN_ROOT
(default: /usr/share/lintian)
(entries marked with * are compatibility locations)
Jakub, I know you have an opinion on less clutter in $HOME. If you
want this, you get the "privilege" of helping me get this right!
~Niels
[1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/ar01s03.html
Perl module support available from libfile-basedir-perl:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/File-BaseDir/lib/File/BaseDir.pm
[2] Because 2.5.12 will start using "~/.lintian" to a much higher
degree than previous releases.
[3] The config file must be set via the harness config and is passed
with LINTIAN_CFG, so the search path is not used.
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