Implement XDG base directories

[mildred]

See: http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html

Basically:

configuration should be searched in:

• XDG_CONFIG_HOME/go-ipgs/config
• XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/go-ipgs/config

Some rules :

• XDG_CONFIG_HOME defaults to HOME/.config when not set
• XDG_CONFIG_DIRS defaults to /etc/xdg when not set

The same logic applies to persistent data files (the one we want to keep) and cached data files (the one we may delete at any moment)

[mildred]

This could be of some use: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~chipaca/go-xdg/trunk/view/head:/README.md

[jbenet]

I don't agree with this setup. the only path needed is the root of the repo/config, which will have a default location but be changeable with a flag (and maybe an env var). Everything else needed will be defined in that file. Sorry! Thanks though.

[jbenet]

(we can revisit this in the future if there is a strong need to do so)

[mildred]

There is nothing preventing the configuration file to be stored in a standard location, is there ?

And is there anything against putting the database in a standard location unless a specific location was specified in the configuration file.

[Winterhuman]

@Stebalien Any chance this could be re-opened? Kubo is one of the few applications which doesn't store config files in ~/.config in my case (specifically to check for ~/.config/ipfs first, then fallback to ~/.ipfs, if moving the default location isn't really viable)

Kubo equivalent to: https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh/pull/218

[Jorropo]

@Winterhuman actually any reason you can't just use IPFS_PATH ?

[Winterhuman]

@Jorropo Using IPFS_PATH wouldn't be the same, it's about making ~/.config/ipfs be detected by default alongside ~/.ipfs (basically the equivalent to IPFS_PATH=.config/ipfs,.ipfs as the default mode)

[Stebalien]

I'd personally like this to happen, but I'd start out by defaulting to ~/.ipfs for now so as not to break a bunch of tools (by default).

However, I won't be working on it. I'll open it up so it can be triaged, but it may be closed again as "not a priority"

[Jorropo]

I'll vote for this to be classed P4, Help wanted.

[alichtman]

Having kubo respect the XDG spec would be great. I try to keep my home directory clean, and the $HOME/.ipfs directory that's currently created by default could be placed elsewhere.

$ ls ~/.ipfs
 blocks
 datastore
 keystore
 config
 datastore_spec
 version

config, datastore_spec and version all seem config-related, and could go in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ipfs/.

blocks, datastore and keystore all seem data-related, and could go in $XDG_DATA_HOME/ipfs/.

Keeping ~/.ifps as the first path searched to maintain backwards compatibility makes sense.

For new installations (where ~/.ipfs does not exist and $IPFS_PATH is unset), we could set these new defaults. And the migration path for users would look something like:

$ mkdir -p $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ipfs
$ mkdir -p $XDG_DATA_HOME/ipfs
$ mv $HOME/.ipfs/config $HOME/.ipfs/datastore_spec $HOME/.ipfs/version $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ipfs
$ mv $HOME/.ipfs/blocks $HOME/.ipfs/datastore $HOME/.ipfs/keystore $XDG_DATA_HOME/ipfs

For now, as a workaround, I'll probably set $IPFS_PATH to $XDG_DATA_HOME/ipfs. However, this seems to break the XDG spec since the config is being mixed with data.

I am a pretty new user to ipfs, so it's possible it makes more sense to keep all of these files together in one of $XDG_CONFIG_HOME or $XDG_DATA_HOME. Happy to hear more thoughts on this.