I wholeheartedly agree with this blog post. I believe someone on here yesterday was asking about config file locations and setting them manually. This is in the same vein. I can’t tell you how many times a command line method for discovering the location of a config file would have saved me 30 minutes of googling.

  • KIM_JONG_JUICEBOX@beehaw.org
    0·
    2 years ago

    Start your application / program with “strace” and see all the files it opens.

    Also run “lsof” on a running process to see what files it has open.

    • heeplr@feddit.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      I doubt that’s a linux problem. All apps store config in /etc, ~/.*rc or ~/.config

      Everything else should be considered a bug (looking at you, systemd!)

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      Certainly not. Nothing should write to /usr/bin except for the package manager in FHS distros and some distros binary directories aren’t writable at all.

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      2 years ago

      ~/.config is the non-root version of /etc these days. But you just have to know that, which isn’t ideal.

      • Jummit@lemmy.one
        1·
        1 year ago

        If you are a developer, please take a look at the XDG Base Directory Specification and try to follow it, users will be very grateful.

        Short summary: Look for $XDG_CONFIG_HOME for configs and $XDG_STATE_HOME for state. If they aren’t available, use the defaults (./config and .local/share).