Hi Nilesh, On Sun, 10 May 2026 at 09:23, Nilesh Patra <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 31/10/25 10:00 pm, James Addison wrote: > > Thanks, Alexandre, > > > > On Thu, Oct 23, 2025, 17:46 Alexandre Detiste <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > >> Hi, > >> > >> Trixie has been released. > >> We/you can proceed with the plan to remove > >> the current unpatched/verbatim /etc/matplotlibrc > >> > > > > I'll file a python3-matplotlib bugreport for this cleanup after spending a > > little time to trace the history of the mpl-data directory referenced in > > the same patch. > So, as per the documentation > https://matplotlib.org/stable/users/explain/customizing.html#customizing-with-matplotlibrc-files > > It searches for 4 places. The 4th place is actually > "INSTALL/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc, where INSTALL is something like > /usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages" > > Since upstream kind of supports having matplotlibrc as a global setting, I am > having second thoughts if we should just keep > `/etc/matplotlibrc` as that is the right place for system specific config > files to reside. > > We are also installing /usr/share/matplotlib/matplotlib.conf/matplotlibrc but > I am unsure how useful this is. > > Could someone advice? > > Best, > Nilesh
Thanks for reviving this thread - I'd totally forgotten about it, and did not file that cleanup bug :| I'm not sure what to do about the /etc/matplotlibrc file and whether to include it in the python-matplotlib-data package. Currently we ship three identical copies of it: $ sha256sum /etc/matplotlibrc /usr/share/matplotlib/matplotlib.conf/matplotlibrc /usr/share/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc 097216cf659e1afde4ca842c3010ce3b49b7c85f4cfe92b5122857974d70d1bc /etc/matplotlibrc 097216cf659e1afde4ca842c3010ce3b49b7c85f4cfe92b5122857974d70d1bc /usr/share/matplotlib/matplotlib.conf/matplotlibrc 097216cf659e1afde4ca842c3010ce3b49b7c85f4cfe92b5122857974d70d1bc /usr/share/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc (these are not symlinks -- and for reference, they're from python-matplotlib-data/3.10.7+dfsg1-3) As a reminder and/or for mailing list readers: the upstream matplotlib documentation _does not_ mention /etc/matplotlibrc -- the Debian source package adds a patch that introduces it: https://sources.debian.org/src/matplotlib/3.10.7+dfsg1-4/debian/patches/20_matplotlibrc_path_search_fix.patch I think this means that in practice, some Debian installations may be using the /etc/matplotlibrc file to customise matplotlib's configuration, so we should be cautious about removing it. As a system operator, I'd probably want to know that the file is no-longer-used at the same time as a python-matplotlib-data package update that stops reading from it. In other words: I _wouldn't_ want either of these situations: (the file to be removed silently by a package update, despite the library still attempting to read from it) OR (the file to continue to exist, despite the library no longer reading from it). If we remove the conffile and update the patch to remove /etc/matplotlibrc as a config location from the library: would a Debian host where the /etc/matplotlibrc file has been customised usually emit a warning/note during package update/purge? Regards, James
