For one user account, I want to have some bash scripts, which of course would be under version control.

The obvious solution is just to put the scripts in a git repository and make ~/bin a symlink to the scripts directory.

Now, it seems on systemd systems ~/.local/bin is supposedly the directory for user scripts.

My question, is mostly, what are the tradeoffs between using ~/bin and ~/.local/bin as directory for my own bash scripts?

One simple scenario I can come up with are 3rd party programs which might modify ~/.local/bin and put their own scripts/starters there, similar to 3rd party applications which put their *.desktop files in ~/.local/applications.

Any advice on this? Is ~/.local/bin safe to use for my scripts or should I stick to the classic ~/bin? Anyone has a better convention?

(Btw.: I am running Debian everywhere, so I do not worry about portability to non systemd Linux systems.)

Solved: Thanks a lot for all the feedback and answering my questions! I’ll settle with having my bash scripts somewhere under ~/my_git_monorepo and linking them to ~/.local/bin to stick to the XDG standard.

  • waffle@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    23 hours ago

    I’ve tried both and ~/.local/bin tends to be used by a bunch of tools to install their own binaries/scripts so depending on what you use it can become very messy (which did happen in my case). I used to have a ~/Documents/Scripts directory in my $PATH and that was much cleaner than my current setup so that’s what I’d recommend, especially if you want to use Git with it! :)

    • wolf@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      0·
      23 hours ago

      Thank you very much! I was exactly looking for someone telling me that some tools install their own binaries/scripts to ~/.local/bin.

      Most probably I’ll just symlink my scripts from ~/.local/bin then, this would avoid troubles with 3rd partys and most of my dotfiles are symlinked anyway, so the infrastructure is there.