[Feature Request] Follow XDG Base Directory Specification

[brl1214]

From a post on steam forums just linking it here.

Over in our group chat this has come up a few times already.

From a user who already has > 150 dot-files/directories in his home directory: Please, not another one! Since many years, there has been a standard for configuration/data/cache storage. Please follow it.

Simplest implementation (pseudo-code):
if (set(XDG_DATA_HOME))
dir=$XDG_DATA_HOME/Valve/Steam
else
dir=$HOME/.local/share/Valve/Steam
end if
Store everything that is now in $HOME/.steam into that directory.

If you want to get fancy, try to implement the whole specification and split Steam's data between XDG_CONFIG_HOME ($HOME/.config per default), XDG_DATA_HOME and XDG_CACHE_HOME ($HOME/.cache per default).

http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/882965239742479108/
Original post.

As far as I can see, ~/.steam is just a symlink to ~/.local/share/Steam

Imho there should be an option to disable the recreation of ~/.steam.

[dcbishop]

Actually ~/.Steam seems to be a real directory for me, but it contains mostly links. Should be in ~/.config/Steam (or whatever XDG is set to: http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html ). There are also ~/.steampid and ~/.steampath links created all adding to home folder pollution.

[jleclanche]

It's a little sad this has received little attention. Steam still creates ~/.steampath, ~/.steampid and ~/.steam full of symlinks instead of fully using the xdg basedir spec.

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

[brl1214]

Steam still not properly implementing XDG basespecs. thanks for more shit in my home folder.

For what it's worth, I dealt with this by setting $HOME in $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. For anyone interested in the code, here's the link.

[pfsmorigo]

No updates yet? How hard is to follow the XDG basespecs?

[escondida]

As an addendum, steam seems to partially implement it for at least the overlay since vulkan came about. However, the spec specificially...specifies...that all the XDG dirs are variables, and Steam always creates $HOME/.local/share/vulkan/implicit_layer.d/steamoverlay_{i386,x86_64}.json even if XDG_DATA_HOME is set to another location (in this case $HOME/local/data).

+1

[escondida]

Since after all these years, Steam still creates no fewer than 4 garbage files in $HOME, a non-optimal workaround is to create a wrapper for steam:

#!/usr/bin/env sh
HOME=$HOME/local/data/games/steam_garbage # or wherever
exec /usr/bin/steam "$@"

This also has the beneficial side effect of fooling any rude game devs that follow Valve's example because they either don't know any better or just have a philosophical appreciation for slovenliness.

[theKraid]

this sucks. please fix this, I dont want any of this garbage in my home folder

[Soapux]

The steam Linux client is in dire need of many QOL fixes, this being a big one.