[Python-Dev] pkgutil, pkg_resource and Python 3.0 name space packages (original) (raw)

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Wed Jan 9 14:47:17 CET 2008

Paul Moore wrote:

On 09/01/2008, Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> wrote:

Note today's Coding Horror blog entry: "Don't Pollute User Space"

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001032.html Keep your dirty, filthy paws out of my personal user space! :-) Absolutely [...] If applications need to store shared files, that's what the \AppData and \Application Data folders are for. Sentiments I agree with... Yes, with the one proviso that Windows (XP, at least, maybe Vista is actually better in this regard) makes it extremely difficult for the user to manually do anything in these directories,

Only because Windows XP uses a stupidly long path with spaces in it. It's not actually hard to navigate manually to these directories.

If the windows installers created by the 'bdist' commands allow you to automatically put stuff there then it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

so that I'd say this is only appropriate for fully application-maintained files. As far as I know, Windows lacks any really sensible place to store application configuration data which is meant to be user edited on occasion (e.g. rc/ini files, startup scripts, etc).

What user editing is meant to be done with extension modules installed into a site directory. Programmer editing maybe... :-)

Michael Foord

That's often what I see ending up in %USERPROFILE% - even though as Christian points out, it's "officially" wrong.

Paul.

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