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I'm creating a project that I want to be able to distribute across platforms. I'm writing in Java and AWT which already gives me a pretty large range of devices, but I'm mostly interested in Windows and Linux (Debian/Ubuntu).

I'm trying to determine where I should put config files. I have application-wide configuration files and user-specific files. Where are common directories to put these files?

Here's my current setup:

Windows:

App Config: %PROGRAMDATA%\MyApp\config\

User Config: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\MyApp\

Other:

App Config: /opt/MyApp/config

User Config: $HOME/.MyApp/

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  • 4
    Sounds good to me.
    – Robert Harvey
    Aug 8, 2012 at 23:18
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    If you're going to use environment variables to construct paths, at least use %LOCALAPPDATA%. There's nothing that guarantees that the path you constructed there from the user profile actually points out the local appdata. If you've got Win32 bindings, prefer Known Folders.
    – Lars Viklund
    Aug 9, 2012 at 1:51
  • It looks like in general the problem can be avoided by using something like platformdirs
    – Émile Jetzer
    Mar 8 at 16:22

2 Answers 2

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This sounds OK, it's pretty much what most software does. But in Linux, you might want to put the app configuration files in /etc (or under a subdirectory, e.g. /etc/myapp) as it's more fitting to the FHS:

/etc Host-specific system-wide configuration files

Also, you might want to put user configuration in ~/.config/MyApp rather than ~/.MyApp. This helps reduce clutter in the user's home directory.

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    I especially support the advice about ~/.config/MyApp rather than ~/.MyApp.
    – mircealungu
    Mar 20, 2017 at 10:37
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I'm no expert, but in my experience, Linux puts some default (non-editable) config files in /etc/your-app-here, whereas user-editable config files these days go in ~/.config/your-app-here (that is $HOME/.config/your-app-here)

Reference link

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    files under /etc/ are of course editable, and are edited to configure system-wide behaviour; however, you need special permissions (e.g. by being root) to make these changes.
    – umläute
    Feb 10, 2015 at 12:20

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