[Python-Dev] proto-pep: plugin proposal (for unittest) (original) (raw)

David Bolen db3l.net at gmail.com
Tue Aug 3 01:21:32 CEST 2010

Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> writes:

I would be interested in hearing from other Mac users as to where they would look for configuration files for command line tools - in ~ or in ~/Library/Preferences?

My primary personal machine has been OSX for years now, and as someone who lives in the command line (well, or Emacs shells), I think either approach is workable for command line only tools.

I will say that if I need to find preferences or application-specific files my first inclination is absolutely to look under ~/Library. That's the "platform" location (just as looking for dot files under Linux is my first choice, or "Documents and Settings/" for Windows). I don't think I shift mental gears automatically for command line tools versus not, unless I have some prior knowledge about the tool.

With that said, given all the third party and Unix-oriented stuff I install under OSX, it's hardly rare (as has been pointed out elsewhere) to be working with ~/. either, so it's not like I'd consider it that unusual to find that's where I need to go.

In glancing at my current system, it does appear command line only tools are more commonly using ~/. files rather than under ~/Library (which tends to be stuff packaged up as an application in /Applications, even if they can also be run from the command line).

Though it might be a biased sample set since I'm more likely to have brought in command line tools to OSX from the Unix side of things, I suspect that's true of other users of command line tools as well.

I will say that it's rarer to find a native (Cocoa/Carbon) GUI application that doesn't store preferences or application settings beneath ~/Library, and in such a case I'd feel they were more "wrong" and non-conforming if they didn't do that. So it depends on how "native" an application wishes to be perceived. I guess in thinking about it while writing this, having something installed in /Applications is more strongly linked with ~/Library in my mind than other tools.

Of course, even with /Applications, non-native GUI apps are more of a mixed bag. For example, the X versions of Gimp and Inkscape - Gimp properly uses "~/Library/Application Support" while Inkscape still uses ~/.inkscape. Of course, as X apps, neither truly feels native or conforming anyway.

So that probably helps make things as clear as mud :-)

-- David

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