7 ms·

This would break a bunch of little things in annoying ways. Like I have shell script tools that store shell scrollback logs in .cache, and I want that past rebo

This would break a bunch of little things in annoying ways. Like I have shell script tools that store shell scrollback logs in .cache, and I want that past reboot.

neilv 2y ago
FWIW, I've been doing it for many years, and not noticed any problems. If something is supposed to persist past reboot, I wouldn't put it in `.cache`. Though I don't know offhand what the official documented behavior of `.cache` is, and I can't immediately find that documentation (maybe some open desktop cabal thing?).
- mhitza 2y ago
  XDG_CACHE_HOME same text across bott resources https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-... or https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory > $XDG_CACHE_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user-specific non-essential data files should be stored. If $XDG_CACHE_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.cache should be used.
- viraptor 2y ago
  That's silly. Cache is there for preserving things across many runs of some application. Applications certainly use it in a way that assumes long term storage. It's not for short term temporary things. It's a cache. It's not going to cause "problems". It's just going to massively slow down many use cases that rely on downloads.
- arp242 2y ago
  It's fine to put ~/.cache on tmpfs, but doing it by default for the general case is going to cause a lot of hurt. My ~/.cache could be rm -rf'd without too much worry right now, but that doesn't mean that persisting it isn't useful. For example on my system right now: - Browser cache is useful to persist, especially with some larger sites. - I put my Go module and build cache in ~/.cache, and while that can be deleted it's useful to persist because it make builds shorter, and avoids having to (re)-download the same modules over and over again. Note that at the moment my internet is kind of crappy so this can take quite a while. - Some other download cache things in there, from luarocks, xlocate, few other things. - I store psql history per-database in ~/.cache/psql-dbname. It's useful to keep this around. - Vim backup files, persistent undo files, and swap files are stored in ~/.vim. The swap files especially are important because I want to keep them after an unexpected system crash. Some of this is solvable by moving stuff to other directories. Others are inherently unsolvable. I also have just 8G of RAM, which is fine but not fine for storing ~/.cache in RAM.

This would break a bunch of little things in annoying ways. Like I have shell script tools that store shell scrollback logs in .cache, and I want that past reboot.

neilv 2y ago

FWIW, I've been doing it for many years, and not noticed any problems. If something is supposed to persist past reboot, I wouldn't put it in `.cache`. Though I don't know offhand what the official documented behavior of `.cache` is, and I can't immediately find that documentation (maybe some open desktop cabal thing?).

mhitza 2y ago
XDG_CACHE_HOME same text across bott resources https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-... or https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory > $XDG_CACHE_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user-specific non-essential data files should be stored. If $XDG_CACHE_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.cache should be used.
viraptor 2y ago
That's silly. Cache is there for preserving things across many runs of some application. Applications certainly use it in a way that assumes long term storage. It's not for short term temporary things. It's a cache. It's not going to cause "problems". It's just going to massively slow down many use cases that rely on downloads.
arp242 2y ago
It's fine to put ~/.cache on tmpfs, but doing it by default for the general case is going to cause a lot of hurt. My ~/.cache could be rm -rf'd without too much worry right now, but that doesn't mean that persisting it isn't useful. For example on my system right now: - Browser cache is useful to persist, especially with some larger sites. - I put my Go module and build cache in ~/.cache, and while that can be deleted it's useful to persist because it make builds shorter, and avoids having to (re)-download the same modules over and over again. Note that at the moment my internet is kind of crappy so this can take quite a while. - Some other download cache things in there, from luarocks, xlocate, few other things. - I store psql history per-database in ~/.cache/psql-dbname. It's useful to keep this around. - Vim backup files, persistent undo files, and swap files are stored in ~/.vim. The swap files especially are important because I want to keep them after an unexpected system crash. Some of this is solvable by moving stuff to other directories. Others are inherently unsolvable. I also have just 8G of RAM, which is fine but not fine for storing ~/.cache in RAM.