[Python-ideas] A standard location for Python configuration files.

[Christian Heimes]

Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> Please, no. As I said in #7175, ~/.local is the user-specific equivalent of /usr
> or /usr/local. Do you put your configuration files in /usr/local ? Why put them
> in .local ?
> 
> An Unix user will look for Python configuration files in his home directory, and
> then perhaps in a subdirectory named .python or .py<something>. *Not* in .local,
> which is a place for locally installed stuff, not user-editable config files.

First of all we should discuss if we are talking about automatically
generated config files or human editable config files. If the
configuration files are frequently edited by a user than ~/.local or
~/.config aren't the best place.

> I don't find this argument very serious. The Python interpreter reclaiming the
> ~/.python directory only seems natural and reasonable to me. If we follow your
> argument we can't introduce *any* new location just because someone might
> already use it. This is quite unacceptable.

The path ~/.python is a so obvious choice for a file or directory that
contains Python specific stuff that it probably used by lots of people.
If we are going to introduce a directory in the user's home directory
and not in some subfolder like ~/.local or ~/.config, then I like to
stick to another Unix tradition. Configuration directories are usually
suffixed with ".d". How about ~/.python.d/?

Christian