finddirs

This is a Go package for retrieving common directories found across all operating systems.

Locations

Application Directories

Directory	Unix [1][2]	Windows [3]	macOS & iOS [5]	Plan 9
Config directory (system-wide)	/etc	C:/ProgramData	/Library/Application Support	/lib
Config directory (local)	~/.config	C:/<user>/AppData/<Local or Roaming> [4]	~/Library/Application Support	~/lib
State directory (system-wide)	/var/lib	C:/ProgramData	/Library/Application Support	/lib
State directory (local)	~/.local/state	C:/<user>/AppData/Local	~/Library/Application Support	~/lib
Cache directory (system-wide)	/var/cache	C:/ProgramData	/Library/Caches	/lib/cache
Cache directory (local)	~/.cache	C:/<user>/AppData/Local	~/Library/Caches	~/lib/cache

1. On Unix based systems, XDG environment variables $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, $XDG_STATE_HOME, and $XDG_CACHE_HOME are first tried for paths ~/.config, ~/.local/state, and ~/.cache respectively. If the particular XDG environment variable is set, it is used instead.
2. If Termux is detected on Android, system-wide directories will be under ~/../usr (of course, as an absolute path).
3. On Windows, KNOWNFOLDERID constants are used.
4. Usage of AppData\Local or AppData\Roaming depends on whether UseRoaming is set to true in Config struct.
5. System-wide directories are not supported on iOS — iOS apps are inside a sandbox, therefore system-wide directories cannot be accessed. Calling RetrieveAppDirs with systemWide argument set to true will result with an error.

User Directories

Directory	Unix [1], macOS, and Windows (Also See [2], [3], and [4])
Desktop	~/Desktop
Downloads	~/Downloads
Documents	~/Documents
Pictures	~/Pictures
Videos	~/Videos on Linux and Windows, ~/Movies on macOS
Music	~/Music
Templates	~/Templates
Fonts	$XDG_DATA_HOME/fonts, ~/.local/share/fonts, ~/.fonts, /usr/share/fonts, and /usr/local/share/fonts on Linux
	~/Library/Fonts, /Library/Fonts, /System/Library/Fonts, and /Network/Library/Fonts on macOS
	C:/WINDOWS/Fonts and C:/Users/<USER>/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Fonts on Windows
PublicShare	~/Public on Linux and macOS, C:\Users\Public on Windows

1. On Unix based systems, entries in user-dirs.dirs are read. If user-dirs.dirs cannot be found, or it's malformed, RetrieveUserDirs returns with error. If an entry is $HOME/ (that means, it is empty), it is set to an empty string (""), and no error is returned. On Unix, check for empty directories.
2. Plan 9 is not supported. RetrieveUserDirs on a Plan 9 system will return an error.
3. If Termux is detected on Android, the Desktop, Templates, Fonts, and PublicShare directories will be empty, as they don't exist on the that platform.
4. iOS is not supported. RetrieveUserDirs on an iOS system will return an error.

Usage

Very straightforward: go get -u github.com/karagenc/finddirs-go

package main

import (
	"fmt"

	"github.com/karagenc/finddirs-go"
)

func main() {
	userAppDirs, _ := finddirs.RetrieveAppDirs(false, nil)
	fmt.Println(userAppDirs)
	systemAppDirs, _ := finddirs.RetrieveAppDirs(true, nil)
	fmt.Println(systemAppDirs)

	userDirs, _ := finddirs.RetrieveUserDirs()
	fmt.Println(userDirs)
}

Remarks/Notes

• Since you're dealing with directories:

  • Let me recommend github.com/mitchellh/go-homedir. It is used by this library and is much more reliable than os.UserHomeDir().
  • For those who want to dive deep, here are platform-specific documentations:
    • XDG Base Directory Specification
    • Apple File System Programming Guide
    • Microsoft Documentation on KNOWNFOLDERID constants

• filepath.ToSlash was used for every directory returned from functions in this package. This is to prevent shellwords from interpreting backslash as escape character. To test this behavior, remove this line, and see what happens. Use filepath.FromSlash to convert slashes to OS-specific path seperators.