== XDG: Tidying Recoll data storage ==

The default storage structure of Recoll configuration and index data is
quite at odds with what recommends the 
link:http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html[XDG
Base Directory Specification], the reason being that it predates said spec.

By default, Recoll stores all its data in a single directory: '$HOME/.recoll'

This is not going to change, because it would be quite disturbing for
current users.

However, the location of this directory can be modified using the
+$RECOLL_CONFDIR+ environment variable.

Furthermore all significant Recoll data categories can be moved away from
the configuration directory (maybe to '$HOME/.cache'), by setting
configuration variables:

* _dbdir_ defines the location for storing the Xapian
  index. This could be set to, e.g., '$HOME/.cache/recoll/xapiandb'. It is
  quite recommended that 
  this directory be dedicated to Xapian (don't store other things in
  there).
* _mboxcachedir_ defines the location for caching access speedup information
  about mail folders in mbox format. e.g. '$HOME/.cache/recoll/mboxcache'
* New in 1.22: you can use _aspellDictDir_ to define the storage
  location for the aspell spelling approximation
  dictionary. E.g. '$HOME/.cache/recoll'
* _webcachedir_ may be used to define where the visited web pages
  archive is stored. E.g. '$HOME/.cache/recoll/webcache'. This is only used
  if you activate the Firefox plugin and web history indexing. You may
  want to think a bit more about where to store it, because, contrary to
  the above, this is not discardable data: your Recoll Web history goes
  away if you delete it.

If you use multiple Recoll configurations, each will have to be customized.

Once these are put away, there are still a few modifyiable files in the
configuration directory, for example the 'recoll.pid' and 'history'
files, but these are small files. Moving 'recoll.pid' away would be a
serious headache because it is used by scripts.