xdg-user-dirs-update(1) User Commands xdg-user-dirs-update(1)NAMExdg-user-dirs-update - Create and configure default desktop user direc‐
tories.
SYNOPSISxdg-user-dirs-update [--force] [--dummy-output path] [--set DIR path]
DESCRIPTIONxdg-user-dirs-update is used to create the default desktop user direc‐
tories such as :
Desktop
Download
Templates
Public
Documents
Music
Pictures
Videos
In general this is run at user login to an XDG compatible desktop such
as GNOME or KDE. The directories are created using the user's locale -
and this information is then stored in the ${HOME}/.config/user-
dirs.dirs file such that if the user then changes the locale they log
in as, the directories will still be referenced correctly, but will
remain in the original locale unless you run the xdg-user-dirs-update
command with the --force option.
The default names used to create these directories are configured in
the system configuration file /etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults.
Other configuration is stored in the file /etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf. In
this file you can disable this functionality system-wide and define
what encoding is used in the creation of the directories. By default
this is UTF-8 since this is the main encoding used in the desktops.
Continuous monitoring is done by the file manager - nautilus in GNOME -
and if these directories are renamed or removed nautilus will update
the user's configuration file to reflect this change.
OPTIONS--force
Force an update of the directories to the current locale.
--dummy-output path
Simulate the creation of the user configuration file and write to
the specified path.
--set DIR path
Update the user's configuration changing the DIR to point to the
specified path.
Valid desktop directories (DIR) are:
DESKTOP
DOWNLOAD
TEMPLATES
PUBLICSHARE
DOCUMENTS
MUSIC
PICTURES
VIDEOS
FILES
The following files are used by this application:
/usr/bin/xdg-user-dirs-update
XDG User Directory management utility.
/etc/xdg/user-dirs.conf
Used to configure the operation of xdg-user-dirs-update.
Can be used to totally disable the the creation of these directo‐
ries and also to define what locale encoding should be used by
default - by default this is UTF-8 which is the preferred encoding
used by the GNOME Virtual File System layer.
/etc/xdg/user-dirs.defaults
Used to configure the default locations that xdg-user-dirs-update
will create/manage relative to the user's ${HOME}.
${HOME}/.config/user-dirs.dirs
Location of the user-specific configuration including the current
list of directories and what they map to.
${HOME}/.config/user-dirs.locale
Contains the name of the locale (excluding encoding) that was used
to create the initial set of directories.
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Determine what may happen if you force an update.
% xdg-user-dirs-update--force --dummy-output /tmp/dummy.out
Moving DOWNLOAD directory from Downloads to Download
Also will write output like the following to /tmp/dummy.out:
# This file is written by xdg-user-dirs-update
# If you want to change or add directories, just edit the line you're
# interested in. All local changes will be retained on the next run
# Format is XDG_xxx_DIR="$HOME/yyy", where yyy is a shell-escaped
# homedir-relative path, or XDG_xxx_DIR="/yyy", where /yyy is an
# absolute path. No other format is supported.
#
XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME/Desktop"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/Download"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME/Templates"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME/Public"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME/Documents"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME/Music"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Pictures"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME/Videos"
Example 2: Change location of my pictures.
% xdg-user-dirs-update--set PICTURES \
/home/user/Documents/MyPictures
Modifies the ${HOME}/.config/user-dirs.dirs file to have the line:
...
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME/Documents/MyPictures"
...
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │library/xdg/xdg-user-dirs │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface stability │Uncommitted │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSO
More information can be found at:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-user-dirs
xdg-user-dirs-gtk-update(1), xdg-user-dir(1), attributes(5)NOTES
Written by Darren Kenny, Sun Microsystems Inc, 2008
SunOS 5.11 03 Apr 2008 xdg-user-dirs-update(1)
