Is it possible to start Spotify with a different .config?

[lenanel]

I run native Linux client 64-bit. In the latest version I can't search for anything, because it crashes with 'segmentation fault' as soon as I type anything in the search field. Therefore I repackaged an older version, removed the files that conflicts with the newer version and renamed it spotify-legacy, so that I can have both installed. The older version can't play local files, therefore I can't have them shown in that version, because it stops when it come to a local file. So I want to have different .config for them, instead of change in preferences everytime I need to switch which version to use. There is nothing in preferences about using a different .config (only about cache).

Is it possible to start Spotify with a command that tells it to use a different config folder?

[Liam]

Hi, if I am remembering correctly (I am probably wrong) the cache folder also contains the configuration data.

If it doesn't, then I'm afraid there is no way to do this.

Liam

[lenanel · Accepted solution]

Cache is ~/.cache/spotify and config is ~/.config/spotify.

Inspired by how I start two instances of dropbox I just tried this:

HOME=$HOME/.config/spotify-legacy /usr/share/spotify/start-spotify

And it works!!! 😄 Now it puts both .cache and .config in ~/.config/spotify-legacy.

[Liam]

---

@lenanel wrote:

Cache is ~/.cache/spotify and config is ~/.config/spotify.

Inspired by how I start two instances of dropbox I just tried this:

HOME=$HOME/.config/spotify-legacy /usr/share/spotify/start-spotify

And it works!!! 😄 Now it puts both .cache and .config in ~/.config/spotify-legacy.

---

Thanks for sharing your solution!

[leamas]

Of course anything which works is fine. And perhaps the rather brutal solution to reset $HOME is the only way out of this.

However, the directories ~/.config and ~/.cache are not not random choices, they are part of the freedesktop specification. According to this it should be possible to change the config directory ~/.config using the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable. Likewise, relocating ~/.cache should be possible using XDG_CACHE_HOME.

If this doesn't work it s plain bug IMHO, since the usage of ~/.cache and ~/.config is so clearly defined in the spec

[lenanel]

I tried this:

XDG_CONFIG_HOME=$HOME/.config/spotify-legacy /usr/share/spotify/start-spotify

Before that I renamed ~/.config/spotify-legacy and added .old. It created a new folder ~/.config/spotify-legacy and put a file  Trolltech.conf there, but no folder for .config. It used the same settings as I have in ~/.config/spotify. So I guess this means "it doesn't work"...

I tried to echo some of the variables from your link, but none of them were set. I'm running Linux From Scratch, so it could of course be a problem with my system...

[leamas]

They are normally not set, that's as expected. Reading the spec, this means that we use ~/.config and ~/.cache in that case.

More worrying is that a simple 'strings' on the spotify binary shows no sign of any XDG_* string. libcef.so has XDG_CACHE_HOME  (and XDG_DATA_HOME, not used by spotify) but not XDG_CONFIG_HOME. So it seems likely that spotify does not respect XDG_CACHE_HOME and XDG_CONFIG_HOME.

Which, in that case, is a bug. If there was a bugtracker, it should have been reported there. But there isn't 🙂  Anyway, something to be fixed to next release. Until then, relocating $HOME seems to be the only way unless the devs comes up with more info.

EDIT: changing $HOME is actually not without risks e. g., if spotify spawns  new process. Generally, $HOME is expected to be, well , $HOME 🙂 A safer bet would be to create one or two shell wrappers which symlinked the alternative config/cache directories to ~/.config/spotify and  /.cache/spotify. Just my 5 öre...

EDIT2: I've got a confirmation that spotify does not respect XDG_CACHE_HOME and XDG_CONFIG_HOME. from the devs.  It's a bug, probably fixed in next release.