Use xdg basedir spec on linux

[ogarcia]

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html

Instead of ~/.packer.d, configuration should be in the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/packer/ and cache (safely-deletable files) should be in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/packer.

[nywilken]

Hi @ogarcia thanks for reaching out here. Packer, along with other HashiCorp tools, have standardized around the use of a placing the product configuration files on ~/<product>.d/ (*nix) or %APPDATA%/<product>.d/ for Windows systems. But Packer does allow users to override those settings with the use of environment variables https://packer.io/docs/other/environment-variables.html

By setting PACKER_CONFIG_DIR=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/packer/ and PACKER_CACHE_DIR=$XDG_CACHE_HOME/packer/ you should be able accomplish what you are requesting in this issue. If the new information on how to override the default settings for Packer are sufficient feel free to close this issue. Or leave a comment if you would like to discuss further. Cheers!

[ogarcia]

Hi @nywilken thanks for your quick response! But if cache and config dir are well supported, why is not the default behavior use the XDG spec?

I think that the implementation is simple in this case. For Linux systems:

• For ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}, if variable is defined, use it, else use ${HOME}/.config.
• For ${XDG_CACHE_HOME}, if variable is defined, use it, else use ${HOME}/.cache.

Sample in bash:

export PACKER_CONFIG_DIR=${XDG_CONFIG_HOME:-${HOME}/.config}/packer
export PACKER_CACHE_DIR=${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-${HOME}/.cache}/packer

[teddylear]

I can take a look into this.

[SwampDragons]

That would be great!

[teddylear]

@SwampDragons I believe I have addressed issue in attached PR, but had issues issues with testing os specific paths. Please see comment on PR about issue, any ideas for testing welcome!

[tony-sol]

Current content of $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/packer/ isn't actually a config, it's more like a data/state, so i guess files like checkpoint_cache and checkpoint_signature should be placed either in XDG_CACHE_HOME and XDG_STATE_HOME, or PACKER_CONFIG_DIR should be renamed into PACKER_HOME_DIR as well it has all types of state by default (by default - i mean, without any other sets of PACKER_CACHE_DIR or PACKER_PLUGIN_PATH, which are actually inconsistent in theirs namings)