One of the annoyances of Linux is working out where configuration information is, following through multiple layers of indirection and files over-riding other files. This looks like adding another layer, another place to look, and if you're reading the man file for a shell (for example) it probably won't even mention that this could invalidate the information contained in that in the man file.
mariusor 17 hours ago [-]
> working out where configuration information is
Generally, good behaved applications have an entry in their man page that spells out these details for you, so you don't have to work out anything.
user3939382 17 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately so many packages these days don’t even have a man page at all let alone one with good config info.
mariusor 17 hours ago [-]
Well ... hopefully they're open source and all that.
ktm5j 16 hours ago [-]
You're not wrong. In a worst case scenario I resort to using strace to figure out where a program is reading config from.. from what I understand, if this kernel module is in use then even that approach wouldn't help.
But since the use case is personal dotfiles, I imagine the user isn't going to forget that they set this up.
brianjlogan 15 hours ago [-]
To be fair the author shows an example of using NixOS. It's absolutely another layer of indirection (probably several) but it does make that usual Linux "fun" less problematic because of its immutable nature and API design.
rnhmjoj 12 hours ago [-]
> this could invalidate the information contained in that in the man file.
No, it doesn't. The point of modetc is precisely keep both myself and the programs happy: the files are actually stored where I like to keep them, but they can be accessed as if they were stored where the developer intended.
skobes 18 hours ago [-]
Tomorrow: modify man pages from kernel space!
deafpolygon 18 hours ago [-]
Always check the man pages..
tengwar2 12 hours ago [-]
And I said that the man pages would be a part of what you have to examine. 95 pages in the case of bash (that's after running it through troff). man pages were fine when they were three pages long, but their lack of any internal index has become a problem.
Ok, now you might have a dozen files which could contain the information, where the location of each file can be modified by environment variables. It's tolerable if you are working on something you change weekly, but a practical problem if you do it yearly or it's entirely new.
BenjiWiebe 10 hours ago [-]
'man bash'. Type G. Press PgUp until you see the FILES heading (took one press for my terminal size). There's your list of files. Alternatively, instead of G and PgUp, type /FILES<Enter>.
Of course, this doesn't help at all when software either doesn't have manpages, or doesn't include the list of files in the manpage. Just nitpicking your bash example.
tengwar2 9 hours ago [-]
This is HN, not Reddit. You can safely assume that every single person here knows how to use man, particularly if they mention using troff to format it properly. There remains a problem.
pimlottc 16 hours ago [-]
I didn’t understand what this was from the title. Perhaps a better description would be “mod_rewrite for your homedir”
yokoprime 19 hours ago [-]
I struggle to see a valid usecase for this that isn’t handled by symlinks.
rnhmjoj 15 hours ago [-]
Hi, author here: whether it's a valid use case depends on your level of OCD, but the difference compared to symlinks or bind mounts is that you will have a clean home: e.g. `ls -la` won't show any "hidden" files.
Also, completely unrelated to my motivation, someone pointed out that modetc could be used to quickly hotfix packages built with Nix.
Say that you need to fix a CVE in openssl, normally that would require to rebuild all dependent packages, which takes a long time. Instead with something like modetc you could build just openssl and rewrite /nix/store/<hash>-openssl-3.6.0/ -> /nix/store/<hash>-openssl-3.6.0-hotfix/.
Another application might be replacing some configuration file with placeholders for secrets, with one file with the secrets substituted in, without having to modify it in place, possibly only for a specific UID. This is something you might find useful on NixOS.
regularfry 19 hours ago [-]
If I symlink ~/.ssh -> ~/.config/ssh, I still have .ssh in my ~. Whereas if I rewrite it, I don't.
hvenev 19 hours ago [-]
Will you not have `~/.ssh`? If you have `.ssh .config/ssh` as a rewrite rule, `stat ~/.ssh` will still find it.
txtsd 19 hours ago [-]
The point is to have a clean home directory.
jl6 18 hours ago [-]
Abandon hope.
I just treat ~ as a system-owned configuration area, and put my actual files (documents, photos, etc.) in a completely different hierarchy under /.
SAI_Peregrinus 11 hours ago [-]
"/home/${USER}" for whatever junk programs are going to stick there, "/home/${USER}/home" for my "real" home directory.
oftenwrong 15 hours ago [-]
I have been doing this for decades. My files are in a sub-directory of $HOME. It also makes it very obvious when a piece of software does not treat your $HOME with respect.
trollbridge 16 hours ago [-]
You could write a kernel module, then, that just hides certain symlinks from you (which is effectively what this module is).
ComputerGuru 14 hours ago [-]
On Windows this was always easier because, for some reason, most everyone respected %appdata% compared to XDG_CONFIG_HOME, but also because hidden files wasn’t just a naming convention but an actual separate metadata flag.
Sardtok 12 hours ago [-]
Always... Except for the decades before this became common. Never a bloated C: root directory. Microsoft even had games store stuff in My Documents\Games at one point. My Documents was a user dir that saw a lot of abuse over the years.
ComputerGuru 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, as in there’s no reason Linux can’t clean up its game the same way.
SAI_Peregrinus 11 hours ago [-]
They still have that, it's just `My Documents\My Games` now. And Visual Studio makes a folder in My Documents for every annual release. And…
Joker_vD 13 hours ago [-]
That ship has sailed 30 years ago.
user3939382 17 hours ago [-]
The use case is that you can actually use your home directory without either (a) hiding files or (b) wading through 40 config files and dirs that XDG ignorant devs put there.
This is the first I’ve heard of using ~/etc instead of ~/.config as $XDG_CONFIG_DIR. Is there any precedent for that?
rnhmjoj 13 hours ago [-]
Well, it's just the natural extension of the FHS convention to the home directory.
I didn't come up with this idea, though, I think I saw this in a reddit thread and started doing it myself: I like that the directories are visible and follow the usual structure.
godelski 12 hours ago [-]
Why not push it under a hidden directory? Like ~/.local/etc? If we're reconstructing some of the hierarchy I think it makes sense to group and hide. Isn't the problem that the home folder is getting cluttered?
rnhmjoj 12 hours ago [-]
Why would I hide them? They're not really special and since I'm organising them with modetc they're not cluttered.
For reference, my home looks something like this
~
├── bin binaries and scripts
├── etc configuration files
├── var
│ ├── lib program data
│ └── cache program caches
├── src git repositories
├── img pictures
├── mail email in maildir format
├── note text notes, todo
├── doc documents
└── down downloads
godelski 23 minutes ago [-]
I mean we hide in the first place because configs and we don't want to clutter
But more I was thinking that having ~/bin ~/etc ~/src and so on is just clutter. I use ~/.local/{bin,build,lib} so it's compact and reduces clutter in my home
dividedbyzero 12 hours ago [-]
But why would I want those directories visible in my home dir?
rustyminnow 11 hours ago [-]
Why would I want them hidden? I access files in ~/.config almost daily, I think this is a really good idea
erlkonig 3 hours ago [-]
XDG doesn't handle complex environments, especially not heterogeneous computing environments. Something long the core strength of Unix is acknowledged by XDG and then left utterly unaddressed. Without this, the "standard" is as much an impediment as an aid.
It's amusing that modetc goes through all this effort to twist dotfiles into the XDG half-solution, and here I am using symlinks through /dev/shm/xdg/* to warp XDG into sort-of working in an actual heterogeneous environment.
Because XDG by itself is a failure beyond trivial cases.
ycombinatrix 7 hours ago [-]
NixOS solves the same problem without having to mess with the kernel
simonkagedal 13 hours ago [-]
The limit of 16 rules is interesting. Where does that come from?
Joker_vD 13 hours ago [-]
Every time I see yet another dotfile-management solution I just can't help but wonder: maybe it's the dotfiles that are the problem?
user3939382 17 hours ago [-]
I absolutely love this and have wanted to take the time to build this for years precisely because of dotfiles. Thank you!
Rendered at 06:19:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Generally, good behaved applications have an entry in their man page that spells out these details for you, so you don't have to work out anything.
But since the use case is personal dotfiles, I imagine the user isn't going to forget that they set this up.
No, it doesn't. The point of modetc is precisely keep both myself and the programs happy: the files are actually stored where I like to keep them, but they can be accessed as if they were stored where the developer intended.
Ok, now you might have a dozen files which could contain the information, where the location of each file can be modified by environment variables. It's tolerable if you are working on something you change weekly, but a practical problem if you do it yearly or it's entirely new.
Of course, this doesn't help at all when software either doesn't have manpages, or doesn't include the list of files in the manpage. Just nitpicking your bash example.
Also, completely unrelated to my motivation, someone pointed out that modetc could be used to quickly hotfix packages built with Nix. Say that you need to fix a CVE in openssl, normally that would require to rebuild all dependent packages, which takes a long time. Instead with something like modetc you could build just openssl and rewrite /nix/store/<hash>-openssl-3.6.0/ -> /nix/store/<hash>-openssl-3.6.0-hotfix/.
Another application might be replacing some configuration file with placeholders for secrets, with one file with the secrets substituted in, without having to modify it in place, possibly only for a specific UID. This is something you might find useful on NixOS.
I just treat ~ as a system-owned configuration area, and put my actual files (documents, photos, etc.) in a completely different hierarchy under /.
I didn't come up with this idea, though, I think I saw this in a reddit thread and started doing it myself: I like that the directories are visible and follow the usual structure.
But more I was thinking that having ~/bin ~/etc ~/src and so on is just clutter. I use ~/.local/{bin,build,lib} so it's compact and reduces clutter in my home
It's amusing that modetc goes through all this effort to twist dotfiles into the XDG half-solution, and here I am using symlinks through /dev/shm/xdg/* to warp XDG into sort-of working in an actual heterogeneous environment.
Because XDG by itself is a failure beyond trivial cases.