On 22Oct2018 19:26, boB Stepp <robertvst...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 9:47 AM Mats Wichmann <m...@wichmann.us> wrote:
As you've concluded by now, this isn't a completely trivial exercise,
and you'll possibly get asked the question "why do you think you need to
know that?".
Actually no one has yet asked me this question, and you have me
intrigued. Importing the various program modules/module contents is
no issue. Where I believe I need to know the paths to things are to
get to data folders, config files, and occasionally utility programs
that I have written that are on my hard drive, but not copied to my
current program suite.
Data folders inbuilt to your app? (I'm going to call it an "app" purely
for convenience.) Not sure there's a universally good answer for this.
You can include data files in your package I think (haven't tried this,
as far as PyPI/pip goes), which means you could locate them from your
source code.
Happy to hear more on this from others.
Config files:
I'm coming to be of the opinion, based on a couple of things I'm
writiing at the moment, that apps should (a) come with a builtin default
config (possibly computed form the environment the find themselves
executed in) and that (b) that config should be expressed in a class
instance which can transcribe itself to a file in the right format.
Why?
It solves the "where is it" problem: it is in the code, as some function
which constructs the app's config instance in the absense of a config
file.
It solves the "how does the user get their first config file for later
hacking/customisation"? If the config file is not in the well known
place (~/.your-apprc or ~/.config/something, etc) then having made your
default config you can transcribe it to the default place. Now the user
has a file they can modify.
It also solves the "incomplete config file" problem: if you can
construct a default config, you can usually handle an incomplete config
as "construct the default, then alter based on the contents of the
config file". Which lets the user keep a tiny config file modifying only
the stuff which needs tweaking.
Utilities:
I my opinion, unless they shift with you app it is the end user's job to
have these in the execution path ($PATH on UNIX). If you app/package
provides them you need a bin directory, with the same issues as your
data files.
Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@cskk.id.au>
_______________________________________________
Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
