Allow customizing the location of TLDR_HOME

[Seirdy]

Currently, TLDR_HOME is hard-coded in src/tldr.h to point to ~/.tldrc.

It would be nice to configure this location via environment variables or a config file. I personally would prefer to set TLDR_HOME to $XDG_DATA_HOME/tldr to comply with the XDG Base Directory Specification and keep my $HOME clean.

[sebdanielsson]

Please make this happen!

[gerardbosch]

Hi there, I think it should be $XDG_CACHE_HOME/tldr instead of $XDG_DATA_HOME/tldr. The "manpages" contained there are cache that can be recreated.

Backup systems will typically ignore the $XDG_CACHE_HOME/ (which defaults to ~/.cache/ if undefined), but not $XDG_DATA_HOME/, as the later should contain user data. Cheers!

[superatomic]

If this feature is ever implemented, this change should also be made to the shell completions in the autocomplete/ directory, as right now they are hard coded to $HOME/.tldrc/tldr/pages/.

[gerardbosch]

Hi there! Was this finally implemented? I think the bot closed as stale (I don't see a related merge PR or similar).

For anyone interested there's a very performant Rust implementation of tldr that implements Freedesktop.org XDG spec: tealdeer https://github.com/dbrgn/tealdeer
Can be installed with Brew, Nix,...

[andrewcrook]

as I pointed out here

whilst the tldr c client doesnt use XDG it does look for the following environment variable to store the cache

TLDR_CACHE_DIR

This can be used, for example, to achieve

TLDR_CACHE_DIR=“$XDG_CACHE_HOME/tldrc”

[toxxmeister]

Slight clarification on the above, TLDR_CACHE_DIR should likely be set to just $XDG_CACHE_HOME (or whatever else you like) since .tldrc/ is created within the specified directory.
If you set the variable to the suggestion above, at best you will end up with $XDG_CACHE_HOME/tldrc/.tldrc/ hierarchy, if $XDG_CACHE_HOME/tldrc/ already exists, or at worst you will entirely disable caching if it doesn't.

[andrewcrook]

My last comment was a solution was a fudge. Built in XDG support would be better, it still makes sense to have TLDR_CACHE_DIR if you want different from XDG. Depends how it's implemented or reimplemented. You could do the above allowing the user to rename the directory. I don't think having dot file naming convention for files or directories is helpful when already under a dot file or dot directory which XDG paths normally are.

$XDG_CACHE_HOME = $HOME/.config

$XDG_CACHE_HOME/tldrc/.tldrc/
Is just horrible

As is

$XDG_CACHE_HOME/.tldrc/

$XDG_CACHE_HOME/tldrc/
is better ~/.config/tldrc

Don't you think?

[toxxmeister]

I agree and in fact would prefer to have more precise control or proper adherence to XDG (looking at my XDG dirs, tldrc really is the only one using a dot). My comment above was just clarifying the exact current behavior, since it is (to me at least) a bit unexpected.

In a sense I see three issues here:

1. TLDR_CACHE_DIR name itself is misleading, since it specifies the directory within which the actual cache directory is created, instead of the cache directory itself.
2. The cache directory name is hardcoded to .tldrc, which makes it stand out within XDG dirs.
3. If TLDR_CACHE_DIR doesn't exist, tldr doesn't create the missing directory structure and disables caching altogether.

These three together put you in an awkward position where you either have to set the var to $XDG_CACHE_HOME so that tldr creates .tldrc/ within $XDG_CACHE_HOME/ (which presumably exists), or have to ensure that $XDG_CACHE_HOME/tldrc/ exists, so that tldr can create .tldrc/ within that (which is too much to ask for).