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.

  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    22 hours ago

    It’s just alphabetical so the scripts run in the right order. The numbers serve like “A” or “B” except you can add new scripts between one and ten if it comes up and your “10-whatever” file is a mess. It’s sort of a convention on Linux but not everyone does it.

    Then you just add

    for FILE in ~/.shellrc.d/*; do
    source $FILE
done

    To your ~./bashrc (or your preferred shell). Replace shellrc.d with whatever you choose. I use shellrc.d on servers and stuff because the dot d is also kind of a convention for naming folders. People have their own opinions about that but don’t worry about it until you have strong opinions.

    • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      22 hours ago

      It just makes it easier to backup your customizations. I copy a lot of my settings in there. I use Vim (which isn’t necessarily the best choice but I’m old) so I just put my .vimrc stuff in my folder. Then you just have to backup one folder and, if nothing else, your CLI will stay the same.

      People argue over emacs and vim (as text editors) and systemd vs init but it’s your machine. That’s part of what makes Linux fun.