Cache files not stored under appropriate XDG directory

[dbready]

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

• VS Code Version: 1.57.0
• OS Version: Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS

VSCode appears to store cache/intermediate files under ~/.config/Code. For example: Cache/, CachedConfigurations/, CachedData/, CachedExtensions/, CachedExtensionsVSIXs/, Code Cache/, GPUCache/, etc. There may be other files/folders containing temporary data that is also inappropriate for the ~/.config location.

On a well used Ubuntu system, my total ~/.config/ is 657 MB, the ~/.config/Code directory is 606 MB, and the sum of all .config/Code/ directories starting with “Cache” is 568 MB. While it is possible that the “Cache” naming is a red herring, I believe they should be stored under ~/.cache, as per the XDG specification.

Only noticed this because I am trying to become more diligent about backups, and the total size of my ~/.config was surprising.

[awilkins]

Likewise, only my .config/Code folder is 2.9GB and I'm fairly certain the only thing in there I'd want to back up is my settings.json file and maybe some snippets.

(although by far the worst culprit is Unity3d, Slack also does this).

[elder-n00b]

Related: #3884
Apparently this "feature" is inherited by VSCode and VSCodium from Chromium/Electron, though I see that on MacOS VSCode appropriately puts some caches under ~/Library/Caches/com.Microsoft.VSCode (and com.Microsoft.VSCode.ShipIt) and the rest under ~/Library/Application Support/Code (?).
Some suggest to symlink them out of the way, I have not tried yet.

[juvtib]

I'm having the same issue. I am backing up ~/.config. And I see ~/.config/Code/CachedData show in my backup logs. It looks like these files should be moved to ~/.cache.

[deepak1556]

Upstream issue electron/electron#8124

[juvtib]

Thanks for this link. Looking upstream, I was a bit disappointed to see a comment war about what is cache and what is config.

I'd still like to see cache in the cache directory and configurations in the config directory. This follows the common meaning of cache and config. And it will solve the backup and replication issues reported over the years.

[metov]

This is the same as #3884, isn't it?