[Python-ideas] Add appdirs module to stdlib

[Serhiy Storchaka]

On 01.09.15 11:00, Philipp A. wrote:
> When defining a place for config files, cache files, and so on, people
> usually hack around in a OS-dependent, misinformed, and therefore wrong way.
>
> Thanks to the tempfile API we at least don’t see people hardcoding /tmp/
> too much.
>
> There is a beautiful little module that does things right and is easy to
> use: appdirs <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/appdirs>
>
> TI think this is a *really* good candidate for the stdlib since this
> functionality is useful for everything that needs a cache or config (so
> not only GUI and CLI applications, but also scripts that download and
> cache stuff from the internet for faster re-running)
>
> probably we should build the API around pathlib, since i found myself
> not touching os.path with a barge pole since pathlib exists.
>
> i’ll write a PEP about this soon :)


site_data_dir() returns a string. It contains multiple paths separated 
with path delimiter if multipath=True. I think that a function that 
returns a list of paths, including user dir, would be more helpful and 
Pythonic.

See also PyXDG (http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pyxdg/).