Duplicacy Web shall not pollute user's home folder with cache and logs

Bug
#1

Please describe what you are doing to trigger the bug:
Running Duplicacy Web

Please describe what you expect to happen (but doesn’t):
I expect .duplicacy_web/cache folder to be located under ~/Library/Caches/Duplicacy and .duplicacy_web/logs folder to be located under ~/Library/Logs/Duplicacy. (or /Library… if ran under system account)

Please describe what actually happens (the wrong behaviour):

Transient data is dumped to user’s home folder. Same applies on Windows. (see APPDATA folders)

Related to: Duplicacy must set do not backup attribute to its cache directory on macOS

4 Likes
#2

Both directories can be changed in the Setting page. I’ll make this change in the next web GUI release for macOS (new installations only; if you already have a settings.json file then it will keep using the current directories).

On linux it is easy to change the .duplicacy-web location by setting the environment variable:

env HOME=/some/path duplicacy_web_linux_x64_1.5.1

Personally I don’t want logs to go to one location and the cache to the other. Everything produced by one program should be kept under the same parent directory.

#3

This does not apply to all OSes, at least it does not apply to macOS and Windows, which defines dedicated locations for apps to dump transient caches and logs. Copying from the other comment:

Dumping everything in one pile is bad form; macOS designates special locations for logs and caches and well behaved apps shall follow the convention. Rclone for example does.

This is especially true for GUI application bundles like Duplicacy Web. User should be able to open Console.app and find relevant logs there and nuke Caches willy-nilly without having to spend time to hunt down their nonstandard location. In addition Caches folder is excluded from time machine backup for default — saves Duplicacy a chore of excluding their own folders explicitly.