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Why does firefox keeps using ~/.mozilla directory? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Even after all these years firefox keeps using mozilla hidden directory instead of XDG base directories. For how long will this continue?

Watch https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=259356 for updates to this request.

~/.mozilla/firefox/ is a mish-mash of data, config, and cache. It's not simple to unravel that. Beyond that, it would be a breaking change, and that requires more caution.

credit: u/yo_99 on Reddit.

original link: https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/vkgk78/why_does_firefox_keeps_using_mozilla_directory/

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think moving the folder under ~/.local before splitting the cache folders out is a bad idea. Many people will have specific backup or sync solutions in place that want to include config, recreate data, and exclude cache, so the XDG spec has separate locations for them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

There exists ~/.cache/mozilla (also ~/.cache/thunderbird), so I assume the cache is already separated?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I know, it's not a complete solution, but it would at least serve as a stop gap to clean the mess out of the home folder, before the actually compliant implementation is made, XDG_DATA_HOME should always be saved as it contains the user generated data of an app (that isn't documents)