Grayjay Desktop App

Sorry, to be clear, I dont wan't Grayjay data in my user directory AT ALL. Portable is basically what I want, I'm just very untactfully dropping feedback about where the data is placed.

Even with the "Portable" file, it creates a directory `/home/bisby/Grayjay`. I don't want that. No app should ever put a file or directory directly in `/home/bisby` without me asking it to. The Linux standard for "where should an app put it's files" is defined the XDG spec that I had previously linked (https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/).

The summary is that user specific data should live in $XDG_DATA_HOME and config should live in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME (and various other things like $XDG_CACHE_HOME). If these values are unset, there are predefined places to put the files (eg, data in $HOME/.local/share or config in $HOME/.config, cache in $HOME/.cache).

This puts all the Grayjay data in places like /home/bisby/.config/Grayjay (instead of /home/bisby/Grayjay) which is nested away inside a hidden directory and structured in a consistent way.

This would be the equivalent of putting data in %AppData% in windows instead of cluttering someone's "My Documents" (or whatever the modern equivalent of that is).

Some of the Linux decisions feel a bit like linux is a complete afterthought, but included because Linux users tend to agree with the FUTO philosophies. That is a reasonable thing given the Linux market share, and for "Build Version: 2" that I'm seeing the app info, I'm grateful that linux is included this early. This looks like it can probably replace freetube for me. However, it would go a long way if things are done to make sure they are done the "right way" on Linux (ie, on packaging and on directory specs).

Thanks for the work you've done on freeing up the web.

If you're launching it as "Portable", and you're launching it from your home directory, it's going to place the mutable data in the current directory. This is very standard for portable apps.

So no, "portable" is not what you want. If you launch it as non-portable and it drops a folder in ~, then that is a problem.

In both modes it creates a ~/Grayjay directory, even when launching from ~/tmp/grayjay/Grayjay.Desktop-linux-x64-v2/ so ~/Grayjay was inevitable. In portable mode it makes the directory and does nothing with it. In non-portable mode it dumps a ton of data into the directory. I didn't pay attention to what the data actually was. So yes you're probably right.

But either way, Portable mode isn't behaving portably because it's touching directories outside of the current directory, and non-portable mode is putting data in ~/Grayjay instead of ~/.config/Grayjay so it doesn't do what I want it to do in any mode.

I'm quite happy actually that while this is a HUGE annoyance... It's also only an annoyance, and VERY simple to fix (as long as they do). Which means that this app is likely going to wind up as a daily driver for me once a few things get ironed out. I see the concept and structure of the app, and I like it.

Typically portable apps place their data in the folder where the executable file is located, not the current dir.

Well, ideally I would like the OS solving this problem by simply chrooting/sandboxing apps to their own little worlds, with a proper API giving them optionally a way to the user's file system, similarly to android and iOS.

That is possible on Linux [0], but this kind of separation comes with its own can of worms. However, if your only worry is access to folders, Flatpak applications keep all of their data in a folder away from your home directory and use "portals" to access your system [1]. The security of the sandbox is debatable [2], but I would say if your biggest goal is containing non-malicious but badly behaving applications from messing with your system, then it's a very good solution, given you are comfortable with using Flathub (as most distributions won't build Flatpaks) and with the performance/integration impact this distribution method has.

[0]: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/basic-concepts.html

[1]: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/sandbox-permissions.html

[2]: https://flatkill.org/2020/

…and macOS. Sandboxed Mac apps get their own little home directory in `~/Library/Containers/`. To access anything else, they need to ask through system APIs.

Grayjay dev here, empty dir is definitely not intended and has been written down on the issue list.