[RFC] User Accesable Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

[Gary L Greene Jr]

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On Saturday 27 March 2004 06:11 pm, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Le sam, 27/03/2004 à 17:34 -0500, Gary L Greene Jr a écrit :
> > This is a proposal for a standard to accommodate the accessibility of the
> > filesystem by end-users. We request discussion on this as a new standard.
> > The URL to get to the document is:
> >
> > http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/~abreschm/uafhs/
>
> From a usability POW hidden files (and directories) are very bad.
> I must admit I'm a bit horrified by the number of new hidden roots
> you're suggesting to create (not only you duplicate classic / topdirs
> but you also enshrine stuff like fonts that doesnt exist on the system
> root).

I was under the impression that ~/.fonts was added as an X standard, from font
config tools.

> My proposal would be simple :
> 1. use a single or at most two-three top-level dirs in ~ (etc and the
> rest)

Which others would you remove? The only one that I thought was not neccesary
was config, and that deals with your third point as it helps clear the
current clutter.

> 2. at this point you can probably not hide them since they won't result
> in too much clutter

If it is meant to be a standard, they cannot be renamed. If they aren't hidden
now, they never will be.

> 3. do not try to keep current dotfiles/dotdirs in your spec but move
> them to your clean file layout


Hidden files are sometimes, but not always, bad. One of the suggestions was
that a distribution should create an interface to this, just as they do to
the current installation directories. The reasoning is, and please feel free
to critique, that interfaces to program installation change day by day and
are constantly improving, so a long-term standard should not be involved in
them.

Also, when do you actually look in /bin/ ? It's really not a place to be
looked at directly. The problem is that users only have access to their home
directories, so they can't put it somewhere they won't be looking. Hence, the
hidden nature of the directories.

> As far as I know current $HOME clutter is what's keeping some people
> from using it as their desktop (even though that the natural unix way).
> Cleaning up the mess would certainly help there.
>
> A good point is the way you follow / FHS layout instead of reinventing
> yet another convention.
>
> Anyway - I'm pleased to see someone working on this ! Most people seem
> to have given up on ever cleaning up the home legacy dotfile mess.
>
> Regards,

Thanks for the input.

- --
Gary L. Greene, Jr.
Sent from uriel.gvsu.edu
  6:36pm  up   5:50,  5 users,  load average: 0.32, 0.17, 0.19
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