What's the perfect (OS independent) way of storing filepaths ?

[Paul McNett]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:50:46 +0200, Stef Mientki wrote:
> 
>> Duncan, in windows it's begin to become less common to store settings in
>> Docs&Settings,
>> because these directories are destroyed by roaming profiles 

The directories aren't destroyed by roaming profiles. When the user logs 
out, they get copied to the server. When they log in at a different 
machine, they get copied to the workstation.

So configuration information saved in c:\Documents and 
Settings\pmcnett\Application Data\My Application gets conveniently 
migrated from machine to machine where I happen to login.

A really nice feature.


> Isn't *everything* destroyed by roaming profiles? *wink*

I've heard such bashing of roaming profiles but I've never had anything 
but love for them. That is, until people go and start saving their 
movies and pictures in My Documents. Which is why I set their home 
directory to a server share and have them save their docs there.


> Seriously, I don't know anyone who has anything nice to say about roaming 
> profiles.

I loathe Windows, but roaming profiles was one thing they did (mostly) 
right. I couldn't be happy in a world that didn't include roaming profiles.

Perhaps I'm not seeing the worst of it as I use Samba on Linux as the PDC?

Anyway, on Windows user configuration information should go in the 
user's Application Data directory. If you don't want it to roam, you can 
instead put it in the (hidden) Local Settings/Application Data directory.

Paul