-# filesystem. however, some system profile scripts that are sourced in the
-# system zprofile may attempt to do things that rely on some of these
-# vars. for example, `flatpak-bindir.sh` in the Arch Linux flatpak package
-# references $XDG_DATA_HOME with no fallback. since we do special handling
-# for these vars before we export them, we're forced to do it all here
-# instead of zprofile.
+# filesystem. however, our TMPDIR and XDG vars rely on mutable user paths
+# that may not exist, and as such need to be set up before the rest of the
+# system can use them. this is important as some environments include code
+# in the global zprofile, or source scripts of other shells in the global
+# zprofile, that may rely on our desired dir structure and vars pointing
+# to it. for example, `flatpak-bindir.sh` in the Arch Linux flatpak
+# package references $XDG_DATA_HOME with no fallback. since we do special
+# handling for these vars before we export them, we're forced to do it all
+# here instead of at the top of the zprofile.