There is some level of consensus that configuration should look and behave like this:

• .config stores long-lived user configuration for app behavior. .history stores ephermal activity information for autocompletion & assistance.
• All applications, servers and libraries must be able to handle non-existent configuration and history.
• No application must store cached data in ~/.config under any circumstances.

For the first point, we should strive to move all existing history data out of .config. Especially because history data can become quite large and there should be a simple way of removing all of it without worrying about settings.

Especially the second point is a problem with some apps and settings. Below is a list of issues that track specific problems with apps misbehaving on missing configuration:

• #13585