[BUG] ProtonPlus saving to wrong location?

[SemiRealProductions]

I noticed ProtonPlus wasn't showing up in Steam when I had downloaded a version of GE-proton.

Did some digging and found that it's saving to: .local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d

Whereas on Linux Mint, Proton Versions go into: .steam/debian-installation/compatibilitytools.d

I've tested this over Linux Mint 21.3 and 22 and with a fresh install.

I'm not really sure if this is a ProtonPlus issue or a Linux Mint thing.

But my fix for it so far is to create a link from the download location to the desired location, though this doesn't feel like a proper solution.

Potentially a feature request would be to have an advanced setting where you can see the location of the installed proton version + be able to select where the installs go if things aren't working correctly

[Vysp3r]

Currently it checks if one of the following directory exists in the given order and if it does exists it sets that as the directory.

1. ~/.local/share/Steam
2. ~/.steam/root
3. ~/.steam/steam
4. ~/.steam/debian-installation

Could you please tell me which of these locations exists for you.

[Vysp3r]

Also if you have a feature request I would rather you create a separate issue for it since mixing things just lead to confusion.

Thank you :)

[Arcitec]

I'm using Fedora and this is the first time I hear about .steam/debian-installation/compatibilitytools.d. Why would Steam use a different directory on other distros?

Anyway, since the directories are scanned, it means your system had a .local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d already, before you ran ProtonPlus. And it's prioritized since it's the "most correct" location for Steam these days.

We need to be completely certain of what's goin on with Steam on Linux Mint (and if you've modified your system) before making any changes to this.

[Arcitec]

It also makes no sense to me, because why would they have both directories and not link them to each other? One being a isolated, dead directory?

My guess is you have installed 2 different packaging methods of Steam at some point and had a leftover directory.

[SemiRealProductions]

Apologies for replying so late, I didn't see notifications for this.
@Vysp3r I have ~/.steam/debian-installation which is what prompted this ticket.
I'm not sure why there's a folder ~/.local/share/Steam since I didn't put it there, and when I delete the folder, it gets recreated.

@Arcitec I have only ever had 1 version of steam installed and that's the native package.

[Arcitec]

@SemiRealProductions

I'm not sure why there's a folder ~/.local/share/Steam since I didn't put it there, and when I delete the folder, it gets recreated.

This is mysterious. So it seems like Steam creates its own standard location on every distro no matter how Steam was installed.

Can you run this?

ls -al ~/.local/share/Steam | grep compatib

ls -al ~/.steam/debian-installation | grep compatib

ls -al ~/.steam | grep debian

I wanna see why it's creating extra dirs and if it's symlinking anything.

It makes zero sense to me why it would create the normal, standardized .local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d on your system, but somehow not using it at all. Wtf.

It seems like Linux Mint (or Debian) packaging issues for Steam. We can make it prioritize .steam/debian-installation/compatibilitytools.d but we need to be 1000% sure what's going on first.

[Vysp3r]

@SemiRealProductions Are you still having this issue?
If not please close this issue.
If so could you do what @Arcitec said so we can go forward with a fix.
Thank you!

[SemiRealProductions]

@Arcitec Apologies, I didn't see any notifications for this, plus I have since moved over to Fedora.
But here is the output from those commands.

If there's any symlinks it's because my fix for this was to symlink the .local folder into the .steam/debian-installation folder so I could use ProtonPlus @Vysp3r

[Vysp3r]

@SemiRealProductions From what I can see in the code, what it does is basically go through the following list and it sets the Steam directory on the first directory that exists in the list.

1. /.local/share/Steam
2. /.steam/root
3. /.steam/steam
4. /.steam/debian-installation

If you go through that list what is the first instance that exists?

From what I can see the first option exists, but it looks quite empty so this look abnormal.

Is it supposed to be there or was it my application that created it for some reason?
If it's not supposed to be there try to delete the first option from the list and try again.
If the directory gets created again it means I am creating the directory for some reason, but if it's not created it was something else.

[SemiRealProductions]

.local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d is the one that ProtonPlus is downloading to (and seems to create)
.steam/root is a link that points to .steam/debian-installation
.steam/steam is also a folder link that points to .steam/debian-installation
.steam/debian-installation/compatibilitytools.d gets created automatically when steam is installed, or if i close steam, delete compatibilitytools.d folder and reopen steam, it recreates that folder

I have uninstalled ProtonPlus, Deleted .local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d and when I reinstall ProtonPlus and check the Proton-GE dropdown, there's nothing showing in the dropdown, even though I copied GE-Proton9-22 into .steam/debian-installation
When I download a GE-Proton version, ProtonPlus creates the folder .local/share/Steam/compatibilitytools.d and downloads it into there