Yet…that is exactly the argument of the original post. The banner argument is that VIM is wrong because it doesn’t use `~/.config/vim` and instead uses `~/.vim` … which it has used since before XDG was created. Vim also doesn’t use ~/.vim` on Windows (and the files aren't `.vimrc` and `.gvimrc`, but `_vimrc` and `_gvimrc`.

User expectations differ. The correct place to put application detritus is `~/Library` on macOS (`/Library` if it’s system-level with no user-level). I am surprised when a cross-platform library uses `~/Library` instead of XDG, but I am not unhappy with it.

Frankly, most programs should have a command like `show-config-paths` (`--show-config-paths`) so that you can see where the configuration, caches, etc. are on the platform you’re on, and possibly be told (a) whether they are overridden from default and (b) how to override them. It would be useful to have that output for both human and machine reading.

I agree 100% on having a command to this effect. I always make sure that there is a command to show the currently resolved configuration location, as well as printing out configuration (minus secrets) when the application starts in debug mode.

Furthermore, when you do '--help', whenever it's half-way reasonable, I will show you what your currently resolved settings are for any flags/variables/configs next to the corresponding flag, as well as the default value. I actually don't know why this isn't common.