[Python-Dev] proto-pep: plugin proposal (for unittest)

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 02 Aug, 2010,at 11:48 AM, Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> wrote:

On 02/08/2010 07:18, Ronald Oussoren wrote:
On 2 Aug, 2010, at 7:18, Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:

  
On Aug 1, 2010, at 3:52 PM, Ronald Oussoren wrote:

    
On 1 Aug, 2010, at 17:22, Éric Araujo wrote:

      
Speaking of which... Your documentation says it's named ~/unittest.cfg,
could you make this a file in the user base (that is, the prefix where
'setup.py install --user' will install files)?
          
Putting .pydistutils.cfg .pypirc .unittest2.cfg .idlerc and possibly
other in the user home directory (or %APPDATA% on win32 and
what-have-you on Mac) is unnecessary clutter. However, $PYTHONUSERBASE
is not the right directory for configuration files, as pointed in
http://bugs.python.org/issue7175

It would be nice to agree on a ~/.python (resp. %APPADATA%/Python) or
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/python directory and put config files there.
        
~/Library/Python would be a good location on OSX, even if the 100% formally correct location would be ~/Preferences/Python (at least of framework builds, unix-style builds may want to follow the unix convention).
      
"100% formally" speaking, MacOS behaves like UNIX in many ways.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification#Mac_OS_X_and_Mac_OS_X_Server>
    
Storing files in unix location will be confusing to many Mac users, Apple has an explicitly documented convention for where to store files and dot-files in the user's home directory aren't part of that convention.

An important reason for storing files in ~/Library/Python of ~/Library/Preferences/Python is that these locations are both logical for mac users and can be navigated to from the Finder without resorting to typing the folder name in "Go -> Go to Folder".

  

Really? As a Mac user I have never edited (or even looked at) files in ~/Library. I would never think of going there for finding config files to edit. However in my home directory I have:

    .Xauthority
    .Xcode
    . CFUserTextEncoding  - (an Apple encoding configuration for Core Foundation)
    .bash_profile
    .cups
    .dropbox
    .dvdcss
    .filezilla
    .fontconfig
    .hgrc
    .idlerc
    .ipython
    .mono
    .netbeans
    .parallels_settings
    .pypirc
    .wingide3

Actually that is just a small selection of the .config files/directories in my home directory. It is certainly *a* standard location for config files on the Mac, including some Apple software (XCode) and Python applications.
 
The only apple one that is actually used is the .CFUserTextEncoding file, I have an .Xcode in my home as well but that is empty and last updated in 2007.  AFAIK current versions of Xcode store preferences in ~/Library/Preferences.  Most of the other ones are ports of unix tools and store junk in the standard unix location for storing configuration.   Try edit one without resorting to the command-line, with a default configuration of the Finder you cannot even see these files (and that includes the File open dialog of tools like Text Edit).

The reason you don't normally look in ~/Library/Preferences is that GUI tools on OSX have configuration screens for editing preferences and you don't have to edit them manually.  



My preference would  be to follow this established and well used convention.
 
My preference is still to use ~/Library/Python (or a subdirectory thereof) and filenames that don't start with a dot.

Ronald
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