Managing those pesky . hidden files/directories

shazow

Greetings.

Every program I've ever installed seems to have created a ~/.<its name> file or folder, mostly with useless information. Today, I cleaned out 200 of those useless files and folders which were left over from programs that I've long unmerged. Is there any way to manage them?

Is there a way to tell programs NOT to create their config files in my home directory, but instead in ~/.configs/... or something? Nothing looks messier when you have to scroll through 500 pages after doing `ls -la`.

My brain tells me this is something hardcoded that programs probably have, but Gentoo is known for its l33t customizeability. Is there some variable I can change? Some command I can execute? Someone's testicle I can crush?

Please help,
- shazow

Gullible Jones · n00b Joined: 22 Jan 2005 Posts: 41 Location: Dog Solitude

Unfortunately, no... Which is why the new standard - that they should use ~/.config - has been put forth.

shazow · Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 2:48 am Post subject:

Really? Wild.

Is there any documentation on the progress of this movement?

- shazow

Naib · Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 5:51 am Post subject:

it can be changed, by editing the source to change what it used.
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Cosmin · Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 12:04 pm Post subject:

Errr, excuse me for being picky, but why would you want to scroll 500 lines of hidden files/directories? If you're using mc, you can hide them with F9->Options->show Hidden files. In konqueror View->Show Hidden Files. In mc you can even hide the backups... Don't know for sure the option for Nautilus, but all the file browsers have support for it.
BTW, don't you want to hide the backups also? Eventually put them in a trash directory? If so, use vim, it can make backups in a specific directory.
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"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan

shazow · Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 3:37 pm Post subject:

Cosmin: Because I often find myself editing config files and the like that are hidden, this requires me to filter through the whole lot of them. The problem isn't so much that they're there (though it would be nice to be able to move them), but that 85% of them shouldn't be there. After I unmerge an application, it would be nice if there was an etc-update equivilent which would ask me if I wanted to remove the program's old config file. I really don't want to clutter my home directory whether it's with hidden files or not. It's like having your entire contents of /etc/ in / instead -- it just doesn't make sense.

But on a side note, if I want to create my own hidden directory/file structure, why shouldn't I be allowed to? Hopefully, accordingly to what Gullible Jones said, we will all be able to soon. :-)

Naib: Yes, that is true, but it's a very unreasonable approach. :-)

- shazow