[rfc][icedtea-web] fix for RH947647, following the XDG basedir specification

[Andrew Hughes]

----- Original Message -----
> Hi Jiri,
> 
> On 05/20/2013 03:11 PM, Jiri Vanek wrote:
> > This fix is migrating us to  ~/.config/icedtea and ~/.cache/icedtea
> > instead of ~/.icedtea.
> 
> We decided on the current paths (and files and formats) to stay as close
> to the proprietary JREs as possible. We have deviated from this in the
> past (the contents of the cache directory, for example), but it's either
> because of something not (yet) implemented in icedtea-web, or something
> the user should never have to care about (like cache directory layout).
> 
> I am not sure if that decision was perfect, but if we are going to
> change this now, I would like us to weigh all the pros and cons.
> 
> As far as the patch itself goes, two things jump out to me:
> 
> 1. We need to stay backwards compatible, if possible. For things like
> configuration files, we should check the old locations too. For the
> persistence cache, not reading the old data is like throwing away user's
> data.
> 

This was the main point I was about to make.  It seems to have already been 
changed once; I have $HOME/.icedtea and $HOME/.icedteaplugin it seems.
First run should probably migrate the settings and offer to remove the old
set.  I seem to remember a bug from the previous change so don't create bugs
just for the sake of naming.

I don't see what this has to do with the proprietary plugin; surely it doesn't
look for $HOME/.icedtea?  If it's going to be changed, it should be
$HOME/.config/icedtea-web anyway, as that's the name of the product.

> 2. The patch seems to be missing support for using the environment
> variables (such as $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS) to specify the locations of the
> directories.
> 
> Thanks,
> Omair
> 
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-- 
Andrew :)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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