[issue7175] Define a standard location and API for configuration files

[Marc-Andre Lemburg]

Marc-Andre Lemburg added the comment:

On 02.09.2015 16:37, flying sheep wrote:
> 
> hi mark, i’ve just lengthily replied to you on python-ideas.
> 
> in short: nope! many command line tools that are relatively new (among them your examples git and pip) honor the specs, my ~/.cache, ~/.config, and ~/.local/share is full of things belonging to libraries, cli tools, my DE, and of course also GUI applications.
> 
> please let’s continue this discussion on python-ideas if you’re still not convinced ☺

I think we're mixing two discussions here:

1. How Python itself should install config files, data, etc.

2. How applications written using Python should get help
   from some module to determine where to install their
   config files, data, etc.

For 1. we already have a solution (in sysconfig.py). If you want to
change or amend this, I think a PEP is needed, since the consequences
will affect a lot of users.

For 2. we can use whatever convention or standard is en vogue today.
The module would have to pay close attention to providing backwards
compatibility right from the start, since these conventions are
bound to change over time.

Note that this ticket started with the location of the distutils
config file. The title has since been broadened way too much for
a ticket. I'd suggest closing it as out-of-date and going with
a proper PEP process or development of a new stdlib module
on python-ideas and -dev.

Given the experience with the platform module, I'm not convinced
that the Python release process is suitable to properly respond
to platform changes, so it may be better to simply have a
standard module on PyPI for 2.

----------

_______________________________________
Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<http://bugs.python.org/issue7175>
_______________________________________