`.dart` and `.dartServer` is stored in home folder on macOS

[probablykasper]

On macOS, Dart stores data in the unconventional folders ~/.dart and ~/.dartServer. This contributes to a mess where app files are scattered everywhere, the home folder is cluttered, and backups get filled with unnecessary junk.

This should be fixed and moved to proper paths, like ~/Library/Application Support, ~/Library/Caches and ~/Library/Preferences.

• Dart SDK version: 2.17.1 (stable) (Tue May 17 17:58:21 2022 +0000) on "macos_x64"
• macOS 10.15

[lrhn]

Not sure who uses .dart, but .dartServer sounds like the analysis server.

[probablykasper]

.dart seems to be for user-level settings. If .dartServer is for the analysis server, is there a different repo this should be reported in?

[bwilkerson]

Yes, .dartServer is from the analysis server, and this repo is the right place for reporting the issue.

There's a larger conversation happening about unifying all of our tools and cleaning up where we're putting temporary files. Unfortunately, I don't remember who's leading that effort.

[bwilkerson]

@mit-mit Do you remember where this was recently discussed?

Assigning p3 until I can figure out what the larger plan is.

[mit-mit]

I think there was some discussion about this for pub, @jonasfj ?

I think we might be able to create a package with FFI for determining the canonical folders for each host OS?

[jonasfj]

See: #41560 (comment)

But that's really only for configuration.

There is XDG specification details for where to put cache folders. So if we want .dartServer to live somewhere else we should probably add a applicationCacheHome() to cli_util similar to how I added applicationConfigHome in dart-archive/cli_util#66

[derolf]

In your .zshrc, add:

export ANALYZER_STATE_LOCATION_OVERRIDE=$HOME/Library/Caches/dart_server

cf.

sdk/pkg/analyzer/lib/file_system/physical_file_system.dart

Lines 20 to 22 in f0a07ac

	/// Generally this is ~/.dartServer. It can be overridden via the
	/// ANALYZER_STATE_LOCATION_OVERRIDE environment variable, in which case this
	/// method will return the contents of that environment variable.