We shouldn't teach people to use typer.get_app_dir() for configuration files

[synalice]

Example Code

from pathlib import Path

import typer

APP_NAME = "my-super-cli-app"


def main():
    app_dir = typer.get_app_dir(APP_NAME)
    config_path: Path = Path(app_dir) / "config.json"
    if not config_path.is_file():
        print("Config file doesn't exist yet")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    typer.run(main)

Description

This isn't really a question and more so a request for comments.

In CLI Application Directory section of the documentation you suggest using application directory for storing configuration files. I feel like this is a really bad suggestion because it teaches people to use non-standard directories instead of XDG Base Directory Specification.

While, app_dir is a valid directory for many types of files (like Lark's grammar files), files generated by the user during runtime should really go into their respective XDG_*_HOME directories.

Using app_dir like this does make things more approachable for a new developer, but only at the cost of not teaching him how to do things the right way.

And then it's very difficult to migrate non-XDG application later on. For example cargo has an issue about not following XDG that dates back to 2015:

• Use OS-native config, cache home directories rust-lang/cargo#1734
• https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-split-cargo-home

Operating System

Linux, macOS