Nobody is going to move a dotfile as a breaking change in any established software
We have oodles of counterexamples to this. GIMP did it, Blender did it, DOSBox did it, Libreoffice did it, Skype did it, Wireshark did it, ad nauseum. It’s not really as big a deal as you make it to be (or a big deal at all). You have a transitional period where you look for config files in both locations, and mark the old location as obsolete.
It’s not really as big a deal as you make it to be (or a big deal at all).
It’s a big deal to developers who were inconsiderate enough to do it in the first place. To do it in a non-breaking, non-confusing way requires slightly more care than doing it correctly to begin with. Hence why your $HOME is still a giant mess.
I mean if the code is well written it shouldn’t be hard in the first place. You likely have a sinlge code var for the config path already so instead of hardcoding it to be in $HOME make it check if the file is in XDG_Config, if not check if it’s in $HOME. If the file is in neither of these it does not exist -> create a new one in XDG_Config. If it does exist in $HOME -> Move it to XDG_Config.
