Last month I spent a few hours configuring my system (macOS Sequoia) to follow the XDG Base Directory Specification. I like the idea of having common paths defined for most applications. It worked quite well for me on Ubuntu, and I wanted to declutter my $HOME dotfiles.
$HOME/Library.I already follow part of the XDG specs by putting everything I can in $HOME/.config. I also make heavy use of $HOME/.local to store additional programs (/bin), libraries (/lib) and extra stuff (share). To automate things a little I defined specific environment variables to point to the right directories. Here is what I have in my $HOME/.config/profile.d/00-path.sh which is sourced for every login shell (Apple Terminal use login shell by default):
export XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config"
export XDG_CACHE_HOME="$HOME/.cache"
export XDG_DATA_HOME="$HOME/.local/share"
export XDG_STATE_HOME="$HOME/.local/state"
export TERMINFO=/usr/share/terminfo/
export LEIN_HOME=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/leiningen
export HOMEBREW_NO_EMOJI=1
export HOMEBREW_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1
export W3M_DIR=$XDG_STATE_HOME/w3m
export SQLITE_HISTORY=$XDG_STATE_HOME/sqlite_history
export LESSHISTFILE=$XDG_STATE_HOME/less_history
export PYTHON_HISTORY=$XDG_STATE_HOME/python_history
export NCFTPDIR=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ncftp
export GNUPGHOME=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gnupg
export IPYTHONDIR=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ipython
export JUPYTER_CONFIG_DIR=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/jupyter
export MYPY_CACHE_DIR=$XDG_CACHE/.mypy_cache
export MPLCONFIGDIR=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/matplotlib
export CHICKEN_DOC_REPOSITORY=$HOME/.local/lib/scheme/chicken-doc
export CHICKEN_EGG_CACHE=$XDG_CACHE/chicken
export CHICKEN_INSTALL_REPOSITORY=$HOME/.local/lib/scheme/chicken
export CL_SOURCE_REGISTRY=$HOME/cwd/common-lisp
# export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/homebrew/lib/pkgconfig
Yes, that’s a lot of global settings. Also, please note that the aim is not to follow stricto sensu the XDG specs, just to organise things a little. The first four lines are what is of interest in this case. Things get a little more interesting when we read the documentation related to Python and its ecosystem as we learn that we can modify the default path for the IPython or Jupyter config directory, as well as Matplotlib, or get ride of Mypy stuff. I use $XDG_STATE_HOME to store all my histories (zsh, sqlite, etc.). By defining such environment variables I was able to remove almost everything in my home directory. I know we can move GHCUp, rustup, and other frameworks to other places, but I prefer to keep them in place. Here is the whole picture:
» ls -a ~
./ .config/ .juliaup/ .ssh/ cwd/ Music/
../ .cups/ .local/ .stack/ Desktop/ Pictures/
.cabal/ .deno/ .mail/ .Trash/ Documents/ Public/
.cache/ .DS_Store .Renviron .zprofile Downloads/ Sites/
.cargo/ .ghcup/ .roswell/ .zshenv@ Library/ tmp/
.CFUserTextEncoding .julia/ .rustup/ backup/ Movies/
» ls ~/.config
asciinema/ gh/ htop/ leiningen/ neomutt/ racketrc wtwitch/
bandcamp-dl.json ghc/ ipython/ matplotlib/ newsboat/ ripgreprc yt-dlp/
beets/ ghostty/ irssi/ mdlrc npm/ starship.toml zed/
clojure/ git/ isyncrc mpv/ nvim/ tmux/ zsh/
cmus/ gnupg/ jupyter/ msmtp/ profile.d/ uv/
ctags/ gnuplot/ latexmk/ ncftp/ R/ w3m/
» ls ~/.cache
bibtex-ls/ gh/ m2/ neomutt/ stack/ wtwitch/
chicken/ ghcide/ matplotlib/ nvim/ starship/ yt-dlp/
clojure-lsp/ hie-bios/ maven/ org.R-project.R/ textual/
common-lisp/ lua-language-server/ mu/ slime/ uv/
Everything zsh-related can be stored in XDG_CONFIG_HOME, provided you define the ZDOTDIR location. Here is what I put in $HOME/.zprofile:
ZDOTDIR=$HOME/.config/zsh
for file in "$HOME"/.config/profile.d/*.sh; do
. "$file"
done
Note that the zsh config file (zshrc) will still need to be prefixed by a dot. I also symlink $HOME/.zshenv to $HOME/.zprofile to avoid issue with some CLI tools that won’t initialize zsh as a login shell (e.g., Neovim terminal). I guess it’s not difficult to avoid this issue, but I’m lazy as you know.
♪ Hooverphonic • Mad About You