I use XDG_CACHE_HOME to store git repos. While it's definitely possible to nuke them to save space... it'll just re-fetch everything next time it runs.

Besides, what if you nuke it *while* the thing is running? That doesn't sound like a good idea.

On 2020-02-26 9:45 a.m., Benjamin Berg wrote:
Hi,

so I looked at gsd-housekeeping the other day. With systemd-tempfiles,
it only has two purposes these days:

  1. Cleaning $XDG_CACHE_HOME/thumbnails after 30 days
  2. Cleaning the trash directories after a configurable time

Currently it also tries to clean /tmp and /var/tmp, but doing so is
really dangerous compared to just leaving it up to systemd-tempfiles (I
have filed an MR to disable the logic if we are systemd booted).


Now, systemd-tempfiles can already clean up everything except for the
trash. And considering that $XDG_CACHE_HOME is non-essential by
definition, I think it might be sane to use systemd-tempfiles not only
to clean the thumbnails but the entirety of $XDG_CACHE_HOME in the
future. So I am thinking that we could do the following:

    1. Specify that we use the systemd tmpfiles.d configuration format for
       cleaning $XDG_CACHE_HOME. Also specify that $XDG_CACHE_HOME will be
       cleaned automatically after e.g. 30 days unless otherwise configured
       by an application.
    2. Add some reference to this to the thumbnail specification.
    3. Tell application maintainers that they need to ship a configuration
       if they want to keep files longer (likely candidates are e.g. email
       clients).
    4. As a start, add a "xdg-thumbnails.conf" systemd-tempfiles
       configuration to systemd that cleans $XDG_CACHE_HOME/thumbnails
       after 30 days.
    5. After a grace period, add "xdg-cache.conf" to clean $XDG_CACHE_HOME
       and remove "xdg-thumbnails.conf" again (similar to how
       /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/tmp.conf does it for /var/tmp and /tmp)

Is it reasonable to standardise on the systemd tmpfiles.d format?
Is it OK to clean $XDG_CACHE_HOME after a fixed time period by default?
Other thoughts?

Benjamin











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