[Python-Dev] PEP 370, open questions

[Christian Heimes]

Tim Golden wrote:
> 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.

I can't comment on the matter. I've not used roaming user profiles on
Windows for more than five years. Can someone with more experience shed
some like on the matter?

> 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.

The PEP already explains why I don't want to write to ~/ on Windows. I
had considered it shortly but MSDN advices against it.

Is %USERPROFILE% not equal to %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%? Maybe Gregor did a
mistake because he thought that both point to the same location.

Christian