Linux appimage portability issue (.home Folder)

[Mintloid]

I'd normally like to have accessible files to configure when it comes to Appimages. Thats where creating folders of the same name as the executable come into play (.config & .home).

However when I created .home, and right after I launched the emulator, the bios boot wouldn't even load and there was nothing in the folder (.home). I tried relaunching and closing while removing both .config & .home folders and recreating/keeping .config folder only, went to the share folder where most home data flycast has, copied over the files to a fresh new .home folder next to the appimage, and still the .home folder doesn't recognize anything (no boxart, bios boot still won't startup).

I ask this as a data minimalist because I like to mostly keep all apps & their files on bigger drives (2TB HDD is what I have) since my main drive is small (256GB).

My Specs

OS: Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon
CPU: Intel© Core™ i5-9400F CPU @ 2.90GHz × 6
RAM: 16 GB
GPU: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (Driver ver. 550.107.02)
Display Server: X11

[flyinghead]

By default, Flycast stores its config file in ~/.config/flycast and its data files in ~/.local/share/flycast. The base folders can be changed with the env variables XDG_CONFIG_HOME and XDG_DATA_HOME respectively (instead of ~/.config and ~/.local/share)
I don't know where the .home folder comes from but Flycast doesn't use it.
You can move the config and data folders to an external drive and use symbolic links to point to the new locations.

[xordspar0]

I don't know where the .home folder comes from but Flycast doesn't use it.

AppImage has a convenient feature where if you create a directory like flycast.AppImage.config next to the appimage, when the app starts it will set $XDG_CONFIG_HOME to that directory. Likewise, if you create a directory like flycast.AppImage.home, when the app starts it will set $HOME to that directory. An app that follows the XDG spec should work fine with this with no changes.

I just tried this with v2.4 and it works fine. I would need to see logs or other details to know what happened here.

[flyinghead]

I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.