[Python-Dev] PEP 370, open questions (original) (raw)

Tim Golden mail at timgolden.me.uk
Thu Jan 17 12:30:36 CET 2008

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.

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.

TJG

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list