Bug#916303: steam: installs to ~/.steam, which is not as intended by upstream

[Simon McVittie]

On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 at 11:25:12 +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 at 00:31:33 -0500, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > so I don't see the value of the links Valve dumps in ~/.steam.
> 
> My understanding is that they are mostly a "filesystem API" that the
> Steamworks API (the part of Steam that gets copied into individual games)
> uses to locate the Steam installation.

I've checked on this and the answer is: yes, the symlinks in ~/.steam
(and its accompanying ~/.steampath and ~/.steampid) are a filesystem API
that external components rely on, so those unfortunately aren't going
away any time soon.

> > The two viable solutions I see are.  One, use a debian specific dir in
> > ~/.steam.
> 
> This would be a straightforward
> change after fixing #919467: the "# This is a new installation" code path
> currently says STEAMDIR="$HOME/.steam", and the patch on #916303 changes
> it to STEAMDIR="$XDG_DATA_HOME/.steam", but instead we could change it
> to STEAMDIR="$HOME/.steam/debian-installation-path" or something like
> that.

Valve developers say this would be OK, but we should use a directory
that they won't accidentally use for something else at some point in the
future (so not "install" or "data" or similar). Something like
~/.steam/debian-installation seems most appropriate.

I've updated https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/steam/merge_requests/1
to implement that (not tested yet); corresponding patch attached.
I hope that seems OK to you?

Before merging I'll make sure it does the right thing in a user account
that previously had the ~/.local/share/Steam setup, a user account that
previously had the ~/.steam setup, and a new user account.

> > Two, Valve moves completely to XDG_DATA_HOME.
> 
> I'll ask Valve developers to confirm whether the second is feasible.
> That seems like the ideal solution, but I suspect it isn't going to be
> possible, because of the pre-existing use of ~/.steam as a filesystem
> API/rendezvous point.

I asked, but this is not going to happen in the near future.

    smcv