[Python-ideas] A standard location for Python configuration files.

[Antoine Pitrou]

Christian Heimes <lists at ...> writes:
> 
> PEP 370 already addresses this issue of version specific and general
> config files.

Please, no. As I said in #7175, ~/.local is the user-specific equivalent of /usr
or /usr/local. Do you put your configuration files in /usr/local ? Why put them
in .local ?

An Unix user will look for Python configuration files in his home directory, and
then perhaps in a subdirectory named .python or .py<something>. *Not* in .local,
which is a place for locally installed stuff, not user-editable config files.

> Even if you prefer to use a different naming schema than I've suggested
> in PEP 370 you shouldn't use your suggested paths. For Unix ~/.python
> might already be used. At least it's used on my box as a script that is
> loaded through PYTHONSTARTUP to active tab completion in interactive
> Python shells.

I don't find this argument very serious. The Python interpreter reclaiming the
~/.python directory only seems natural and reasonable to me. If we follow your
argument we can't introduce *any* new location just because someone might
already use it. This is quite unacceptable.