Save profiles to XDG_CONFIG_HOME

[steinybot]

I want profiles to be stored in XDG_CONFIG_HOME so that I can more easily manage them with a typical "dotfiles" / "home manager" setup (i.e. where ${HOME}/.config is synced with a git repository).

The simplest solution that is backwards compatible with the current behaviour would be to allow users to specify a custom directory for profiles (including the default profile). For existing installations can remain where it is.

New installations should use XDG_CONFIG_HOME or ${HOME}/.config if XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set.

[watersb]

Possibly-related: #84808 #162712

On macOS, I have set the environment variable $VSCODE_EXTENSIONS, and vscode uses the specified path for the extensions, at least.

But I haven't yet been able to get vscode to write defaults or profile settings to a specific path.

Are these paths hard-coded?

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/configure/settings#_profile-settings

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The trick is to set an environment variable that is exposed to a GUI app like vscode. On macOS this can be done with launchctl:

launchctl setenv VSCODE_EXTENSIONS "${XDG_DATA_HOME}/vscode/extensions"

I saved this command in a shell script, and then tell macOS to run the shell script when I log in via a LaunchAgent, an XML property list ~/Library/LaunchAgents/env-vars.plist.

I can post the plist file and the shell script, if that would help.

(There's also a "portable mode" VS Code that keeps everything in a sibling folder of the app bundle, but that's not this bug.)

[vs-code-engineering]

We closed this issue because we don't plan to address it in the foreseeable future. If you disagree and feel that this issue is crucial: we are happy to listen and to reconsider.

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