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

Tim Golden mail at timgolden.me.uk
Thu Aug 12 12:54:29 CEST 2010

On 12/08/2010 11:40, Michael Foord wrote:

User editable configuration files are very different from libraries. The per user site-packages folder should be hidden somewhere out of the way where you can get at them if you want them but won't stumble across them all the time. e.g. AppData on Windows.

For files we expect the user to be able to edit we shouldn't go out of our way to make them hard or inconvenient to find.

This really comes down -- as with the Mac discussion last week, I think -- to the tension between standard file locations and easy-to-get-to. The difference on Windows, though, is that while on Mac it's either: Apple standard /This/That/TheOther vs Unix standard $HOME/.something on Windows it's %APPDATA%\myprog vs whatever-I-thought-of-at-the-time.

APPDATA isn't actually that hard to get to on any version of Windows post 2000. (Just stick %APPDATA% into any Explorer window -- even IE, for goodness sake). Even from the command line it's not hard:

notepad "%APPDATA%\python\python26\idle.ini"

Ultimately, as a Windows user/developer, I'd vote for a memorable consistency, which for me would be %APPDATA%\python... If everything's in one place, I'll just create a shortcut / hardlink / whatever to get me there when I want to change things.

TJG

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