Allow users to customize directories (cache, runtime)

[geowarin]

Please tick one:

• this is a new Feature Request, a conversation was started in the Gitter CLI Development Room.
• this is a new Bug Report or Issue, a conversation was started in Gitter User Issues Room.

Please explain the Issue / Feature Request here:

The way skdman manages its directories is non-standard.

I would be great to allow users to customize the directories used by the tool through environment variables.

I think most users (including me) would want keep the sources of the tool (src, bin, var) separated from the cache (candidates, tmp, archives).

A good starting point could be supporting SDKMAN_HOME and SKMAN_CACHE.

Another thing we could support is something more standard like the xdg basedir spec.

We probably have to think about migration strategy or graceful error handling when those directories are updated after the install.

[marc0der]

Allow users to customise directories

[soc]

@marc0der I'm the author of https://github.com/soc/directories-jvm, a library that helps applications pick the right paths on Linux, macOS, BSD, Windows, Redox ... maybe this would be an option for you?

The Coursier dependency manager has been successfully using the library for a while already and migrated their directory structure to it, as far as I know without any major hickups. The native versions of the library have been downloaded 130.000 in the last 90 days, so I believe the library is rather reliable.

[marc0der]

@soc It looks very cool indeed, although unfortunately sdkman's CLI is written in bash (and being ported to Go atm).

[soc]

@marc0der Then using the native version should make more sense I guess. :-)
(Haven't investigated how calling native code works in Go.)

[Scuilion]

I'd like to second the vote for using XDG basedir spec.

[weilbith]

Got this ever worked on?

[untainsYD]

I do support this issue. It is quite annoying that the ~/.sdkmanrc file is created in the home directory.

[soc]

What some projects have found helpful is to introduce some command in the CLI like skd dirs or sdk dirs cache/skd dirs config/... that prints out the directory sdkman intends to use and that other tools can rely on, instead of hard-coding assumptions into their tools.