Stranger Systems

The State of Data Dirs

As the issue has come up on how to handle data dirs on macOS in the dirs-next project, I thought it might be prudent to take a look at how other popular libraries in other languages deal with the issue.

There is some contention over whether XDG style directories (e.g. ~/.config/{.verbatim}) or macOS default style directories should be used (e.g. ~/Library/Application Support{.verbatim}).

What do other languages do?

Python - appdirs

Uses macOS default paths, actively maintained, in the 360 most popular python packages. Does not respect XDG dirs environment variables on macOS

Javascript/NodeJS - xdg-basedir

Seems to just always fall back to XDG dirs, without attempting to use macOS default paths. Doesn't even support windows paths. It will, however, respect the XDG environment variables if set.

There is a smaller appdirs that is a direct port of the python version, with the same behavior as the python version, but nobody seems to use it (~7,000,000 vs 102 weekly downloads)

Golang - xdg

Defaults to macOS default directories, but appears to respect XDG variables when set.

There is also the slightly more popular BurntSushi xdg, which seems to also default to XDG paths.

Java - appdirs

Not super popular, but most popular one I could find. Defaults to macOS default directories, does not seem to respect XDG variables on macOS.

Ruby - xdg

Seems to always follow the XDG standard.

Neat Summary Table

Summary of behavior on macOS:

|----------+----------+------------+------------------|
| Language | XDG Dirs | macOS Dirs | Respects XDG Env |
|----------+----------+------------+------------------|
| Python   |          | x          | no               |
|----------+----------+------------+------------------|
| NodeJS   | x        |            | yes              |
|----------+----------+------------+------------------|
| Golang   |          | x          | yes              |
|----------+----------+------------+------------------|
| Java     |          | x          | no               |
|----------+----------+------------+------------------|
| Ruby     | x        |            | yes              |
|----------+----------+------------+------------------|

Personal Experience

In my experience, most of the command line applications I have on my mac (which I essentially only use for testing my software on macOS). All of my applications appear to be using either XDG base directories, or traditional ~/.appname{.verbatim} folders.

Current status of directories

Currently, directories is returning ~/Library/Preferences{.verbatim} as the config directory. This is, at best, incorrect, as the apple documentation (and inspecting the current state of my mac) indicate that this directory should only be used for macOS managed plists.

Unfortunately, by macOS standards, the config directory (~/Library/Application Support{.verbatim}) happens to be the same as the data directory, so 'fixing' this bug may cause issues with dependent code assuming that the data and config directories are separate folders, when on macOS, they will not be. This, at the very least, needs a callout and some examples in the documentation/readme.

Conclusion

In my opinion, keeping things in line with the apple way, the correct path moving forward is as follows: