On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 5:03 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 11:45 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > I like this, except one issue: I really don't like the .local > > directory. I don't see any compelling reason why this needs to be > > ~/.local/lib/ -- IMO it should just be ~/lib/. There's no need to hide > > it from view, especially since the user is expected to manage this > > explicitly. > > > > I've previously given a spirited defense of ~/.local on this list ( > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-January/076173.html ) among > other places. > > Briefly, "lib" is not the only directory participating in this convention; > you've also got the full complement of other stuff that might go into an > installation like /usr/local. So, while "lib" might annoy me a little, "bin > etc games include lib lib32 man sbin share src" is going to get ugly pretty > fast, especially if this is what comes up in Finder or Nautilus or Explorer > every time I open a window.
Unless I misread the PEP, there's only going to be a lib subdirectory. Python packages don't put stuff in other places AFAIK. On the Mac, the default Finder window is not your home directory but your Desktop, which is a subdirectory thereof with a markedly public name. In fact, OS X has a whole bunch of reserved names in your home directory, and none of them start with a dot. The rule seems to be that if it contains stuff that the user cares about, it doesn't start with a dot. > If it's going to be a visible directory on the > grounds that this is a Python- specific thing that is explicitly *not* > participating in a convention with other software, then please call it > "~/Python" or something. Much better than ~/.local/ IMO. > Am I the only guy who finds software that insists on visible, fixed files > in my home directory rude? vmware, for example, wants a "~/vmware" > directory, but pretty much every other application I use is nice enough to > use dotfiles (even cedega, with a roughly-comparable-to- lib "applications > I've installed for you" folder). The distinction to my mind is that most dot files (with the exception of a few like .profile or .bashrc) are not managed by most users -- the apps that manage them provide an APIs for manipulating their contents. (Sort of like thw Windows registry.) Non-dot files are for stuff that the user needs to be aware of. I'm not sure where Python packages fall, but ISTM that this is something a user must explicitly choose as the target of an installer. The user is also likely to have to dig through there to remove stuff, as Python package management doesn't have a way to remove packages. > Put another way - it's trivial to make ~/.local/lib show up by symlinking > ~/lib, That's not the same thing at all. > but you can't make ~/lib disappear, and lots of software ends up > looking at ~. But what software cares about another file there? My home directory is mostly a switching point where I have quick access to everything I access regularly. -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/) _______________________________________________ Python-3000 mailing list Python-3000@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000 Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-3000/archive%40mail-archive.com
