[Python-Dev] [Python-3000] Reminder: last alphas next Wednesday 07-May-2008 (original) (raw)

glyph at divmod.com glyph at divmod.com
Fri May 2 02:03:24 CEST 2008

On 11:45 pm, guido at python.org wrote:

I like this, except one issue: I really don't like the .local directory. I don't see any compelling reason why this needs to be ~/.local/lib/ -- IMO it should just be ~/lib/. There's no need to hide it from view, especially since the user is expected to manage this explicitly.

I've previously given a spirited defense of ~/.local on this list ( http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-January/076173.html ) among other places.

Briefly, "lib" is not the only directory participating in this convention; you've also got the full complement of other stuff that might go into an installation like /usr/local. So, while "lib" might annoy me a little, "bin etc games include lib lib32 man sbin share src" is going to get ugly pretty fast, especially if this is what comes up in Finder or Nautilus or Explorer every time I open a window. If it's going to be a visible directory on the grounds that this is a Python- specific thing that is explicitly not participating in a convention with other software, then please call it "~/Python" or something.

Am I the only guy who finds software that insists on visible, fixed files in my home directory rude? vmware, for example, wants a "~/vmware" directory, but pretty much every other application I use is nice enough to use dotfiles (even cedega, with a roughly-comparable-to- lib "applications I've installed for you" folder).

Put another way - it's trivial to make ~/.local/lib show up by symlinking ~/lib, but you can't make ~/lib disappear, and lots of software ends up looking at ~.

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