Adjust Cardinal to follow XDG Base Directory Specification

[LeGuipo]

Description

Cardinal is writing files in $HOME/Documents/ like configuration files and random stuff, probably a windows-ism. This is the only application that does that on my system.

I personally sync my Document folder with other hosts so it becomes annoying to clean them up when unwanted files get copied everywhere unnoticed. I had to create AppArmor profiles to avoid this.

So the suggestion is to follow the XDG Base Directory Specification, like storing configuration files generally into $HOME/.config/Cardinal/, etc…

[falkTX]

This should be already fixed in latest git, which doesnt have a release yet. Can you try that?

[LeGuipo]

I noticed that Cardinal 25.06 that is packaged for Archlinux already uses $HOME/.config/Cardinal for its configuration files.
I just tested the latest git version, and this time it puts files and directories in $HOME/Documents/Cardinal instead of $HOME/Documents directly. But it is still undesirable for me. So far I’ve seen in this folder the template file and SurgeXT modules configuration.
I tested the suggested tip in this discussion But the $XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR environment variable has no effect on Cardinal.

[falkTX]

XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR env var is not a thing, it is not under XDG specs.
See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_user_directories.
Cardinal reads this file to set the docs dir as per the XDG spec

[LeGuipo]

This XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR variable is mentioned in both the wiki and the discussion though.
So you said it is fixed, I’d like to understand what do you mean by that if Cardinal still uses a XDG user directory instead of XDG base directories.

[falkTX]

This XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR variable is mentioned in both the wiki and the discussion though.

This variable is an entry on the XDG user-dirs file, it is not an environment variable.

So you said it is fixed, I’d like to understand what do you mean by that if Cardinal still uses a XDG user directory instead of XDG base directories.

If you run

xdg-user-dir DOCUMENTS

It should print the same dir as Cardinal uses, is this not the case?

[falkTX]

Also there might be some confusion here on docs vs config dir.
Cardinal needs to be compatible with VCV Rack things, and Rack has no config vs docs dir difference, its all stored together - all of user patches, templates, modules config and Rack settings.

[LeGuipo]

OK it makes sense now. Depending on how important Cardinal has to mimic VCV Rack’s behavior on dumping files in ~/Documents, my suggestion to follow XDG base specification for everything might not be appropriate. It is a good thing that the application configuration is already stored in ~/.config/Cardinal. In a more XDG-aligned layout, the template files could go to ~/.local/state/Cardinal, and the modules configuration data could go to their own sub-folders in ~/.config/Cardinal. The regular patches can already be stored wherever the user chooses.
If the separate relocation of those files are not practical then an option to let the user to specify the "Document" location would be appreciated.