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Distinguish between the Steam installation (root) and data paths

Simon McVittie requested to merge wip/t16517-steam-install-path into master

Until now we've been conflating these two, but Timothee Besset recently clarified their status for me.

~/.steam/steam is maintained by bin_steam.sh, aka /usr/bin/steam, in which it is referred to as STEAMDATALINK. It is the data directory containing user data (cloud-synced configuration and saves), the download cache, and the default Steam Library directory.

~/.steam/root is maintained by steam.sh, in which it is referred to as STEAMROOTLINK. It is the installation directory, containing Steam executables and libraries.

As a result, they are normally the same, but can differ, in particular in two situations:

  • When testing a new Steam client build by running client/steam.sh, client/ gets used as the installation directory, in conjunction with the existing data directory pointed to by ~/.steam/steam. This avoids having to re-login or re-download your library of games for the new test installation.

  • When Debian bug #916303 was present during the initial Steam installation, the Steam client was unpacked into ~/.steam, resulting in creation of ~/.steam/steam as a real directory that cannot be replaced with a symbolic link. We effectively ended up using ~/.steam as the installation path, but with ~/.steam/steam as the data path. (The Debian steam package has since been fixed, but we cannot easily disentangle existing installations.)

Assigning to @timo to double-check that the commit message and documentation (and secondarily, the implementation) accurately reflect what the Steam client actually wants to see.

Review of the implementation and tests from @denittis or @jpwhiting would also be welcomed.

Edited by Simon McVittie

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