macOS: do not use ~/Library/Preferences

[divVerent]

~/Library/Preferences is reserved for .plist files - one should never create application-specific subdirectories in there, but each application is supposed to just have ONE .plist file in there, named using its bundle ID.

This differs from XDG_CONFIG_HOME as that one expects per-app directories.

See also:

• Config dir on macOS should not be ~/Library/Preferences dirs-dev/directories-rs#62
• https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/FileSystemProgrammingGuide/FileSystemOverview/FileSystemOverview.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40010672-CH2-SW1 "Preferences: This directory contains app-specific preference files. You should not create files in this directory yourself. Instead, use the NSUserDefaults class or CFPreferences API to get and set preference values for your app."

Instead, XDG_CONFIG_HOME should be ~/Library/Application Support, too.

[adrg]

Hi @divVerent

I'm not sure I understand the issue. XDG_CONFIG_HOME does default to ~/Library/Application Support if the environment variable is not set or empty.

[divVerent]

I think I see where I am wrong. The wrong directory ~/Library/Preferences is in XDG_CONFIG_DIRS https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/paths_darwin.go#L30, but not in XDG_CONFIG_HOME https://github.com/adrg/xdg/blob/master/paths_darwin.go#L28.

So that's still wrong, but basically has zero impact as XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is only for reading, not writing.

Feel free to close, although it'd be nice to have a code comment explaining why the plist directories are in there.

[adrg]

So that's still wrong, but basically has zero impact as XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is only for reading, not writing.

As the Apple developer guide states, files in the ~/Library/Preferences directory should only be read or written using their provided API. However, I don't see anything wrong in having one more location to search files. Although unlikely, if some config file happens to be in that directory, the library simply provides its location. It has nothing to do with reading or writing that file.

[BlakeWilliams]

@adrg I understand this has already been closed, but I ran across this because I was wondering why lazygit wasn't able to find my config in ~/.config/lazygit/config.yml which sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. There's an entire thread about it since ~/Library/Application\ Support/ is not where developers expect to define or set configuration for CLI apps.

I was looking at contributing to LazyGit to add support for ~/.config as the first directory to look at before falling back to the current default (~/Library/Application\ Support/). I thought ideally that could be implemented upstream in this package if there's interest in getting the behavior more in line with other CLI applications. That way any package utilizing this package can take advantage of that behavior.

I'd be be happy to look at implementing that here if there's interest (and if I find the time!)

[adrg]

@BlakeWilliams I think adding ~/.config as an extra location to look for config files on macOS is a good idea. I could add ~/.config at the end of the list of default config directories (i.e. the default locations for XDG_CONFIG_DIRS). That should not produce any breaking changes and xdg.SearchConfigFile would find config files at that location (assuming XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is not defined, but it should not be on macOS usually).

I think I'll make this change and include it in the next release, which is this week as I already had one planned.