[Python-Dev] Fixing #7175: a standard location for Python config files (original) (raw)

Russell E. Owen rowen at uw.edu
Thu Aug 12 07:00:41 CEST 2010

In article <4C62C01D.6000900 at netwok.org>, Éric Araujo <merwok at netwok.org> wrote:

Hello list

Tarek opened a distutils bugs in http://bugs.python.org/issue7175 that evolved into a discussion about the proper location to use for config files. Distutils uses [.]pydistutils.cfg and .pypirc, and now unittest2 has a config file too. It would be nice to define one standard location for config files used by stdlib modules, and maybe also by third-party programs related closely to Python development (testing tools, static code checkers and the like), in a way that doesn’t clutter the user home directory with a dozen dotfiles while still being easily found. (The Unix notions of dotfiles and home directory have to be adapted to use non-dotfiles in some standard place on various Windows. The Mac experts disagree on the right directory to use.) Tarek, Antoine, RDM, MAL were +1 on using ~/.python (whether to use .pythonx.y or .python/x.y is a subissue to discuss after general agreement). What do you think about this?

I like the idea as long as different versions of python have different directories and the files are intended to be user-specific.

If the files are shared among all users then /usr/local/ seems more reasonable.

I also think whatever you choose for linux is also the best choice for Mac OS X (my preferred platform). While there are other possible directories, such as ~/Library/Application Support/, all tools derived from unix that I know about use the unix convention (ssh, X11, bash...) and I would argue that Python is close enough to count even though it is a framework build. Put another way, copying the unix convention is simple, is exactly what power users would expect and I don't see it would do any harm.

-- Russell

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