[Python-3000] [Python-Dev] Reminder: last alphas next Wednesday 07-May-2008

[Guido van Rossum]

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 8:11 AM, Alec Thomas <alec at swapoff.org> wrote:
>  Python would not be unique. Mozilla/Firefox does exactly this, putting
>  per-user plugins in ~/.mozilla.

Note that this is moot since I'm going to accept the PEP as it stands
(i.e. ~/.local) but I want to point out something that seems to be
lost occasionally.

Hiding stuff in dot files is the right thing to do when there's a
separate API (like Mozilla) to manage those files. It is IMO much more
questionable when the user is expected to manage things directly using
the standard filesystem API. That's why Pictures etc. are not dot
files.

Of course, there's a gray area -- grizzled Unix wizards manage dozens
of dot files like .profile and .exrc -- but I still think this is a
useful (partial) guiding principle.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)