Currently weston aborts if XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is unset. However the XDG base dir spec says: "If $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set applications should fall back to a replacement directory with similar capabilities and print a warning message."[1] This is specially problematic because of weston-launch resetting the environment (bug 61877). [1] http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html
Explanation for current behavior by pq here: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-March/007902.html Contents: > But still, Emilio, the reason we on purpose fail on missing > XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is that there is no suitable "replacement directory > with similar capabilities" to be found in general. > > For example, falling back to anything under $HOME will fail for > nfs-mounted home, I believe. > > The requirements for XDG_RUNTIME_DIR are actually quite difficult > to fill without specific distribution support. Especially the following: > > "The directory MUST be on a local file system and not shared with > any other system. The directory MUST by fully-featured by the > standards of the operating system. More specifically, on Unix-like > operating systems AF_UNIX sockets, symbolic links, hard links, > proper permissions, file locking, sparse files, memory mapping, > file change notifications, a reliable hard link count must be > supported, and no restrictions on the file name character set > should be imposed." > > - http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html > > Therefore we want the user to explicitly shoot himself in the > foot if they have to. We actually used to have a fallback for > XDG_RUNTIME_DIR being unset, and it only caused confusion.
"Yup, not much to add here, that is the reason for how things work." - krh Closing "wontfix". Let us know if you have better, specific ideas.
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