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

Christian Heimes lists at cheimes.de
Thu Jan 17 19:42:17 CET 2008

Tim Golden wrote:

If it had its priorities switched around, Christian's patch could simply call os.path.expanduser.

No, I can't use expanduser("~") because there is no sensible way to get from the path to APPDATA. In it's infinite wisdom MS has decided to localize the name of its shell folders. On my German WinXP box the APPDATA folder is called "Anwendungsdaten".

I'll hold off now. The situation's clear enough and I'm not really offering anything here. There hard part's going to be making a decision. I think my proposal amounts to:

1) Switch the priority of env var checks in os.path.expanduser so that HOMEDRIVE/PATH comes before USERPROFILE. 2) Have the new code use os.path.expanduser under Windows 3) Document the fact that installing in a per-user way might be writing considerable amounts to a network-based profile.

  1. is sensible but I'd prefer 4):

  2. Default to the %APPDATA% env var but give the user a chance to overwrite the policy with the env var PYTHONUSERBASE, or whatever is a good name for it. Did I mention that I'm not good in naming things? g

Christian

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