Systemd Service Directories

[adedomin]

systemd gives users the option in service units to create and point to various directories under paths like, /run/{app}, /var/lib/{app}, etc. Would It make sense to add these environment variables as possible returns if the XDG paths don't match? I guess I'm asking if I implement this, would you accept such a PR?

systemd.exec(5) has this table that seems to layout the variables set and roughly where they'd end up. I'm not sure why some of these paths would fall into the XDG_CONFIG_HOME paths if the service is a user service. I'd think XDG_DATA_HOME makes more sense.

           Table 2. Automatic directory creation and environment variables
           ┌────────────────────────┬────────────────┬───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
           │Directory               │ Below path for │ Below path for        │ Environment              │
           │                        │ system units   │ user units            │ variable set             │
           ├────────────────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
           │RuntimeDirectory=       │ /run/          │ $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR      │ $RUNTIME_DIRECTORY       │
           ├────────────────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
           │StateDirectory=         │ /var/lib/      │ $XDG_CONFIG_HOME      │ $STATE_DIRECTORY         │
           ├────────────────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
           │CacheDirectory=         │ /var/cache/    │ $XDG_CACHE_HOME       │ $CACHE_DIRECTORY         │
           ├────────────────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
           │LogsDirectory=          │ /var/log/      │ $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/log/ │ $LOGS_DIRECTORY          │
           ├────────────────────────┼────────────────┼───────────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
           │ConfigurationDirectory= │ /etc/          │ $XDG_CONFIG_HOME      │ $CONFIGURATION_DIRECTORY │
           └────────────────────────┴────────────────┴───────────────────────┴──────────────────────────┘

[nojusr]

I do not think that this change would make sense. This addition would be objectively useful, but, in my opinion, applications should be architectured in such a way, where non-standard (i.e non-XDG) paths should be provided to the application by systemd, via generated config, or command-line argument, if required.

systemd should not be a target for any piece of software, since it already has more than enough features to adapt to anything.

[asasine]

I've created the systemd-directories crate for this.