In article <4C62C01D.6000900@netwok.org>, Éric Araujo <merwok@netwok.org> wrote:
Hello list
Tarek opened a distutils bugs in http://bugs.python.org/issue7175 that evolved into a discussion about the proper location to use for config files.
Distutils uses [.]pydistutils.cfg and .pypirc, and now unittest2 has a config file too.
It would be nice to define one standard location for config files used by stdlib modules, and maybe also by third-party programs related closely to Python development (testing tools, static code checkers and the like), in a way that doesn’t clutter the user home directory with a dozen dotfiles while still being easily found.
(The Unix notions of dotfiles and home directory have to be adapted to use non-dotfiles in some standard place on various Windows. The Mac experts disagree on the right directory to use.)
Tarek, Antoine, RDM, MAL were +1 on using ~/.python (whether to use .pythonx.y or .python/x.y is a subissue to discuss after general agreement).
What do you think about this?
I like the idea as long as different versions of python have different directories and the files are intended to be user-specific. If the files are shared among all users then /usr/local/<something> seems more reasonable. I also think whatever you choose for linux is also the best choice for Mac OS X (my preferred platform). While there are other possible directories, such as ~/Library/Application Support/<something>, all tools derived from unix that I know about use the unix convention (ssh, X11, bash...) and I would argue that Python is close enough to count even though it is a framework build. Put another way, copying the unix convention is simple, is exactly what power users would expect and I don't see it would do any harm. -- Russell