[for discussion] move default localStorage location under $HOME

i ran into a problem when trying out your cash project. With my nodejs/npm setup, global installs require sudo: sudo npm i -g cash

however, because of that, cash doesn’t have permissions to write to its own localstorage directory:

$ cash
fs.js:794
  return binding.mkdir(pathModule._makeLong(path),
                 ^

Error: EACCES: permission denied, mkdir '/Users/tenaciousmv/npm/lib/node_modules/cash/node_modules/vorpal/dist/.local_storage'

obviously i don’t want to run cash with sudo 😃

isn’t it more typical to put this kind of storage in ~/.vorpal or ~/.cash or somewhere else under $HOME?

[goodevilgenius]

For reference, this is how yarn does it:

function getDirectory(category: string): string {
  // use %LOCALAPPDATA%/Yarn on Windows
  if (process.platform === 'win32' && process.env.LOCALAPPDATA) {
    return path.join(process.env.LOCALAPPDATA, 'Yarn', category);
  }

  // otherwise use ~/.{category}/yarn
  return path.join(userHome, `.${category}`, 'yarn');
}

function getCacheDirectory(): string {
  if (process.platform === 'darwin') {
    return path.join(userHome, 'Library', 'Caches', 'Yarn');
  }

  return getDirectory('cache');
}

So, getCacheDirectory() returns $HOME/.cache/yarn on Linux, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Yarn\cache on Windows, and $HOME/Libarary/Caches/Yarn on macOS.

I think something like that would be a good option for vorpal.

[goodevilgenius]

I know this is an old issue, but I just found it, while trying to figure out where this was stored.

I think using os.tmpdir() isn’t a good idea, as, on some OSs (like Linux), this may default to a volatile directory. These files may not persist after a reboot.

I think the original suggestion of it being somewhere in the home directory is better. There’s frequently a .cache directory in $HOME. That’s where, e.g., yarn stores its module cache.