[Tutor] setting program configuration for all files and modules of a program

[Tim Michelsen]

Hello,
I am building a simple GUI for a calculation program. I am using config 
files (*.cfg) and reading them in with ConfigParser. This works well 
because I have nearly all code in 1 text file.
But I would like to modularize my code and separate the GUI code from 
the functional code that provides the calculation operations. This will 
help to expand the functionality at a later stage. I want to achieve 
this through splitting the code into different modules.
The problem is now that I would always have to write the configration 
file specific code in each module that uses the configration settings 
(see code below).

How can I provide the settings stored in the configuration file 
throughout my program to all functions without needing to initiate the 
ConfigParser object in each module?

I through of having a special module "settings.py" which I could use to 
read in the configuration from the file and then import this in each module.

Is there a more decent and elegant way?
What is the state of the art in storing and parsing configuraions in 
python programs?

Kind regards,
Timmie



##### CODE #####
import sys
import locale
import ConfigParser
import gettext


## Path to configuration file
configuration_file_name = './config/program_settings.cfg'    # name of 
the configuration file

## read configuration from config file
try:
     program_config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
     program_config.readfp(open(configuration_file_name))
except IOError, (errno, strerror):
     error_msg_exception = _("I/O error(%s): %s") % (errno, strerror)
     error_msg_no_config = _("No configuration file with name "), 
configuration_file_name, _("found in the program directory. Please copy 
your configuration there. Values will be replaced by defaults.")
     print error_msg_exception
     print error_msg_no_config
     easygui.msgbox(error_msg_no_config)
     #pass

output = program_config.get('output', 'file_extension')
#####