Evolution data stored in .var instead of .local -- Should I fix & how?

Applications
1

I’m running Gnome Evolution 3.54.0 (by Flathub.org) on Linux Mint 21.1. Evolution seems to work OK.

I have 5.0GB of Evolution data stored in the .var folder:
/home/USER/.var/app/org.gnome.Evolution/data

But standard since Evo 3.6 is XDG Base Directory Specification, so it should be stored here:
home/USER/.local/share/evolution

I’m not sure how this happened. Perhaps because I’m using Flatpack?

  1. Should I fix this?

  2. I assume fix would be to move data (and the two other Evolution folders) to the normal locations in .local.

  3. To move data, is best method to backup/restore or other?

  4. Do I also need to change any location-related configurations in the app or elsewhere? I don’t see any in the app.

  5. Is it best to pkill Evolution before doing anything?

Note: All data is email, no calendar or addressbook.
Thank you.

2

Flatpak isolates each application’s data, configuration, and cache directories (following the XDG base directories) under ~/.var/app/${application_id}. This is completely expected and intentional. You cannot “move” the data.

2 Likes
3

Evo should be completely shutdown before touching any of its data.
That’s applies not only to the evolution process but also auxiliary
processes:

$ pgrep -fl evolution
5102 evolution
5104 evolution-alarm
5359 evolution-sourc
5631 evolution-calen
5681 evolution-addre

The canonical way to do this is via “evolution --force-shutdown”, but
“pkill evolution” will normally have the same effect, assuming nothing
else matches the string.

poc

1 Like
4

Thank you, ebassi and poc. Much appreciated.

5

Unless you are GIMP trying not to use ~/.var, if I interpret Personal GIMP config folder path: Cover Flatpak (!278) · Merge requests · GNOME / gimp-help · GitLab correctly…