configuration files in linux are not located according to the freedesktop guidelines

[Jonas Nyrén]

Configuration files should be in $HOME/.config/package/ as per the freedesktop guidelines:
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user specific configuration files should be stored. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.config should be used.
See here: ​http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html for more details.
I think this is a fairly easy task to do, and if everybody followed these guidelines we could maybe finally get rid of all these .dirs in the home directory.

[Eric Heintzmann]

What is planned about FreeDesktop XDG basedir specification for filezilla?

​http://ploum.net/post/207-modify-your-application-to-use-xdg-folders
​https://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/XDGConfigFolders
​http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/

[Eric Heintzmann]

According to XDG Base directory specification:
User data should go into $XDG_DATA_HOME (which default to ~/.local/share),
user preferences should go into $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (which default to ~/.config)
and cached data should go to $XDG_CACHE_HOME (which default to ~/.cache).
More details at :
​http://ploum.net/post/207-modify-your-application-to-use-xdg-folders
​https://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/XDGConfigFolders

Full specification can be found at:
​http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/

The Freedesktop.org XDG base directory specification have good de facto adoption.
It has been adopted by:

• GNOME ( ​https://live.gnome.org/GnomeGoals/XDGConfigFolders )
• GTK+ ( ​https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=646631 )
• KDE ( ​http://techbase.kde.org/KDE_System_Administration/XDG_Filesystem_Hierarchy#Freedesktop.org_and_Standard_Directories )
• QT ( ​http://harmattan-dev.nokia.com/docs/library/html/qt4/qsettings.html#setPath )
• XFCE ( ​http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-session/advanced in Files and Environment Variables )
• LXDE
• Razor-qt
• VLC ( ​https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/1267 )
• GStreamer ( ​https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=518597 )
• Chrome ( ​http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=16976 )
• many more upstream applications
• Ubuntu ( ​http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/6557/ & ​http://packages.ubuntu.com/fr/source/precise/libxdg-basedir )
• Debian ( ​http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/libxdg-basedir1 )
• Red Hat
• Fedora
• Suse
• many more distributions

I think that Filezilla should use same locations than the vast majority of Desktop environment and applications.

There are real advantages of following this specification :

• a lot less cluttered $HOME
• Make backups a lot more safer and easier. Backuping your $XDG_DATA_HOME along with your files is enough (or just excluding $XDG_CACHE_HOME)
• A lot easier to reset a default configuration if you want/need it (and without any risk to loose informations). Even for the software itself could choose to reset $XDG_CONFIG_HOME if needed.
• Avoid some strange bugs that happens because you had a old version of some configuration file
• A lot more of flexibility and portability because no path are hardcoded.

[Alexander Schuch]

For a related issue, see #7322.

[Alexander Schuch]

Since FileZilla 3.8.1-rc1, XDG_CONFIG_HOME is honored.