Firefox now supports the Freedesktop.org XDG Base Directory Specification.

Posted by forumcontributer@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 77 comments

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AlternativePaint6@reddit

Fucking finally.

For those unaware, this essentially means that rather than dumping all of its files into ~/.mozilla/ directory, Firefox now splits its files properly into:

~/.config/mozilla for bookmarks, theme, and other configs,
~/.cache/mozilla for temporary cache files, and
~/.local/share/mozilla for other persistent data like extensions.

If everyone had done like Mozilla, your home directory itself would be filled with countless directories from all the apps. Now they are neatly separated under these few subdirectories.

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githman@reddit

So I will have to backup two Firefox directories instead of one now lest I lose my extensions? Thanks for the warning.

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JSouthGB@reddit

I'll now have to back up 3 Firefox directories.

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githman@reddit

Which ones?

One of the three mentioned in the post above is cache. You do not need to backup it.

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AlternativePaint6@reddit

Most people use a Firefox account to sync their stuff on Mozilla's cloud, but yeah, if you do it manually then backup both .config and .local/share.

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Lucas_F_A@reddit

The worst possible aggressor of this failing is golang. They don't drop a .go folder. They just drop a go folder and to annoy you.

(Sorry it sounded ranty. Golang is a fine language, but I hate that we ever reached this point. Also, you can still use an env variable to put it somewhere else IIRC)

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Just imagine a random app deciding to delete your .config folder, every program you use would instantly lose all its settings. This is why Flatpak sandbox and permission system are important. They stop apps from poking around where they shouldn’t be in the first place

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ComprehensiveYak4399@reddit

that random app can also delete your home folder?

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nightblackdragon@reddit

Just imagine a random app deciding to delete your .config folder, every program you use would instantly lose all its settings

Yeah, that's why we have backups.

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wpm@reddit

In my history of using a computer for 3 decades, this has never happened to me on any platform.

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phalp@reddit

Imagine your hard drive randomly deciding to fail

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Rikiub@reddit

It's the same thing if you delete ~/.var.

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Lucas_F_A@reddit

Do flatpak apps have write access to the whole folder? I imagined it would be a subdirectory per app.

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Rikiub@reddit

Flatpak apps don't have access to the whole folder, but the point is anything outside Flatpak can just delete ~/.var.

But well, I doubt that something like that will happen.

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fractalfocuser@reddit

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scruffie@reddit

Most KDE apps dump their config files in /.config. Some use more than one file (konsole.notifyrc, konsolerc, konsolesshconfig, which I assume are all for konsole, but I can't be sure). It gets extra fun when trying to figure which of two similarly-named files is the one used, or whether the file from 2019 is still relevant.

XFCE puts all their config files under ~/.config/xfce4. Be more like XFCE, KDE.

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Lucas_F_A@reddit

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dreamscached@reddit

First thing I do on my new installation of a distro is setting a user session GOPATH env. At least Go has the decency to let you override the (dumb) default.

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raineling@reddit

I am ignorant of the Go project but do have to use one golang application. Would you be kind enough to tell me or point me to where I can learn to set up this environment variable?

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dreamscached@reddit

Unsure about your app specifically, what I mean here is I have to work with Go (as a developer) and I set GOPATH (in ~/.config/environment.d) so that dependencies are pulled into ~/.go rather than ~/go

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raineling@reddit

Oh, ok. Thank you, I misunderstood what you're doing. My mistake.

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Lucas_F_A@reddit

Thanks heavens for that

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Pandoras_Fox@reddit

One of the other reasons for doing a subdirectory inside of ~/.config - if you want to watch a file for changes (for live reloading); you'll want to watch its parent directory for inode swapping reasons.

Putting your config in the top level of the XDG CONFIG HOME means you have to watch the entire configs directory for changes to ensure. Otherwise, :w in vim will clobber the original file by moving its buffer over it, which also clobbers the inode you're watching if you're just watching the single file.

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Lucas_F_A@reddit

If I'm understanding correctly, watchers watch inodes, and to watch a file you need to watch the directory, which contains the list of files it contains (as inodes), because writing to a file will, (or at least may, I imagine? Depending on filesystem perhaps?) , change the inode of the file meaning your file watcher stops looking at what you care about.

Did I get that right? I never thought about that. Thanks for sharing

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Pandoras_Fox@reddit

More or less, yeah! It actually boils down more to how the file gets written/updated.

If an editor writes to the file by opening it, writing bytes out, and closing, it'll be the same inode. If an editor does all of its edits to a buffer file, and then saves by moving or copying the buffer over the original file, the inode of the file will change.

afaik most text editors do the buffer swap method now, as it's more resilient against power loss during a save. I wrote a config watcher + hot reload system a few weeks ago and I had to do some digging into why it only reloaded once when I was watching the file itself directly - it was something I'd never really reasoned about before :)

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Lucas_F_A@reddit

It's kinda cool that you did a project and a few weeks later you're sharing what you learned.

This clarifies it for me! The behavior of text editors you describe makes sense - I just looked it up and indeed a rename is atomic.

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wpm@reddit

I prefer it being ~/go. The extra . char is just annoying and ugly.

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DerekB52@reddit

But the "." Hides it so i never need to see it.

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qodeninja@reddit

lol vscode straight up does not care and make like 4 or 5

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Lucas_F_A@reddit

Wait, what's that about dot net and dot Azure? Does vscode itself create them? Maybe an extension instead?

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qodeninja@reddit

vscode is the only thing i use remotely tied to azure. i dont touch ms

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nj_tech_guy@reddit

Flutter also does this, installs to \~/flutter

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Lucas_F_A@reddit

Interesting that it's not a once off.

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nightblackdragon@reddit

Firefox now splits its files properly into:

Does it? It seems these patches just change directory from $HOME/.mozilla to $HOME/.config/mozilla which mean it will still be just one directory so not exactly following XDG Base Directory Spec.

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__konrad@reddit

I'm curious about is too. Hundreds of MB in .config dir is a big no.

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Daerun@reddit

Shall we "clean" old directories/files from ~/.mozilla, or does Firefox do this on its own?

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doranduck@reddit

From the linked bug report:

"Part of the long discussion on the bug covers it, but there is no migration path supported at this point: only new profiles are expected to use the new setup. Migrating manually is at your own risk, make a backup before."

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forumcontributer@reddit (OP)

Wait for it to hit in release channel and after that 2-3 updates. It is still in the nightly.

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muffinsballhair@reddit

I wish the specification also defined a place for var and log in the home directory though. They now just dumb it in ~/.local/share for that which doesn't seem like the right place, something like ~/.var being defined would be nice.

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Dwedit@reddit

This might make it harder to copy a Firefox user profile from Windows.

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Prior-Advice-5207@reddit

They do not. Cache was in .cache for a long time, now they just moved everything that was in .mozilla before to .config/mozilla. There is no use of .local in that patch I could find.

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DriNeo@reddit

I have never understood how developers can believe that their software will be the only one in the world.

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03263@reddit

If everyone had done like Mozilla, then your home directory itself would have been filled with countless directories from all the different apps to the point where you can't find anything anymore.

But they did, and it is. Hence why I mainly use ~/Downloads as my landing and move stuff to the other home folders (documents, pictures, etc) but rarely look at ~/.

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kmikolaj@reddit

I would rather say: "With all the apps following XDG Base Directory Spec, they are instead filling these few subdirectories with countless directories from all the different apps."

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mrlinkwii@reddit

honestly i dont see the issue , i see nothing wrong with using .mozilla

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zulu02@reddit

My home directory IS filled with countless from all the different apps 😑

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kemma_@reddit

I’m wondering how it will be implemented. Will they move files in new place or I will have to do it myself like an idiot

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forumcontributer@reddit (OP)

theme

Firefox treat themes as an extension. UUID.xpi in extensions directory in .mozilla/firefox/[profileID].[profileName]/

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ipsirc@reddit

https://github.com/queer/boxxy

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JoeKazama@reddit

Holy shit any day where I know my "ls -la ~ | wc -l" will show one less count is a good day!

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wristcontrol@reddit

LMAO, still not installing it.

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Smooth_Signal_3423@reddit

I literally just educated myself on XDG standards last week and cleaned up my home directory. I was surprised to learn that Mozilla was XDG-non-compliant and that I had to symlink ~/.config/mozilla to ~/.mozilla. Glad to know I can update that as soon as this version makes it to Debian stable!

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LuisBelloR@reddit

Maybe in a year, with luck! 😅

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DamianINT@reddit

Maybe more, since debian has firefox-esr not current

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nicman24@reddit

you know, after the layoff these past 3 years, i think there is nothing that bothers me about ff. except maybe the ai sidebar

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starm4nn@reddit

The thing I find really funny is that Firefox seems really reluctant to turn nicher features into extensions. They could even install these extensions by default if they wanted.

It seems win-win. Users could remove functionality they don't want, Firefox can better ensure these APIs have useful functionality, and the core browser remains less bloated.

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nicman24@reddit

they cant. they could with the old xul extensions. now with the watered down webextensions2 they just cannot.

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kill-the-maFIA@reddit

At least it's opt-in and you can plug local models into it, I guess

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nicman24@reddit

Yeah I don't care about that, I mostly care that it pops out when I press Ctrl H to see my history

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CheCheDaWaff@reddit

I've replaced ~/.mozilla and similar folders with symlinks into somewhere more logical. I wonder what will happen to me when I get this update.

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pan_kotan@reddit

That's great. Now, the question is: how to migrate, w/o losing your data?

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Wimzel@reddit

21 years in the making 🤪

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forumcontributer@reddit (OP)

Finally they have technology to do it.

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kemma_@reddit

It’s more like Linux hit critical mass and bypassed 5% share

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Wolnight@reddit

Firefox is also the "Microsoft Edge of Linux" since it comes with basically all distributions. I think their desktop userbase using Linux is higher than 5%.

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forumcontributer@reddit (OP)

I think their desktop userbase using Linux is higher than 5%.

Sadly it is under 5%.

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GreatBigBagOfNope@reddit

That's the inverse question though - 11% of all Firefox installs are on a Linux desktop, but the question the previous commenter was asking was what proportion of all Linux desktops have Firefox installed

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Wolnight@reddit

Oh really? How though? I don't think many use Firefox on Windows and Mac, while I expected higher usage on Linux. I know that Chrome and Brave are two very popular alternatives (looking at the total Flathub downloads), but I would have said that like 50% of Linux users use Firefox.

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