[Python-Dev] PEP 370, open questions

[Tim Golden]

Christian Heimes wrote:
> I'll justify why I view Python as a roaming app. All
> company and university Linux boxes I've used in the past had exported
> $HOME via NFS. So ~/.local is roamed.

I think there is a slight subtlety here: the exported NFS
$HOME is more equivalent to the HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH which
comes from the HOME directory in NT/AD. ie it is simply
a share pointed to by a drive letter available wherever
the user logs on. Roaming profiles actually *copy* the
data from your network versions of USERPROFILE to the
local machine [need to check they still do this; a while
since I've administered this kind of setup].

The difference therefore is that installing large quantities
of Python modules into a roaming profile path will involve
their being copied to-and-fro on logon/logoff which, historically
at least, was a known cause of slow startup/shutdown. I'll
try to confirm if this is still the case.

My own feeling was to use ~/.local on Windows as well
(or whatever is agreed on for *nix) and let os.path.expanduser
handle it. But... from r54364, USERPROFILE takes priority
over HOMEDRIVE/HOMEPATH. Obviously Georg had some rationale
there although a quick search of python-dev doesn't throw
anything up. If we decide anything else here, though, we
would seem to be somewhat in conflict with that interpretation
of home/~ as USERPROFILE.

TJG