https://arran4.github.io/blog/tags/environment/Recent content in environment on Arrans Technical blogHugo -- gohugo.ioentechnicalblog123@arran4.com (Arran Ubels)technicalblog123@arran4.com (Arran Ubels)Arran Ubels. This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.Sun, 11 Oct 2026 02:42:55 +0000https://arran4.github.io/blog/post/2026/054-stop-rebuilding-xdg-directories-in-go-tests/Sun, 11 Oct 2026 02:42:55 +0000technicalblog123@arran4.com (Arran Ubels)https://arran4.github.io/blog/post/2026/054-stop-rebuilding-xdg-directories-in-go-tests/A test that starts like this makes me ask whether we are testing application behaviour or rehearsing how a desktop session starts: 1t.Setenv(&#34;XDG_RUNTIME_DIR&#34;, runtimeDir) 2t.Setenv(&#34;XDG_STATE_HOME&#34;, filepath.Join(tempDir, &#34;state&#34;)) 3t.Setenv(&#34;XDG_CACHE_HOME&#34;, filepath.Join(tempDir, &#34;cache&#34;)) 4t.Setenv(&#34;XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR&#34;, filepath.Join(tempDir, &#34;downloads&#34;)) 5tokenPath := filepath.Join(tempDir, &#34;torbox.token&#34;) None of these lines is automatically wrong. t.Setenv is the correct Go tool when a test genuinely needs to change the environment. filepath.Join is harmless on its own, and t.TempDir is a good tool for real filesystem integration tests.