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Is there a nice cross-platform way to figure out the Right (tm) place to
store configuration files and other data?

Jay

In article <mailman.7995.1232937535.3487.python->,
Jay Bloodworth <> wrote:
>
>Is there a nice cross-platform way to figure out the Right (tm) place to
>store configuration files and other data?

For what purpose? Global program config, user config, what?
--
Aahz () <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/

Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote
programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

>> Is there a nice cross-platform way to figure out the Right
>> (tm) place to store configuration files and other data?
>
> For what purpose? Global program config, user config, what?

I've found three main categories of settings like Aahz describes
(of which I've used all in a single application):

global settings:
I usually keep these in the shared data-store (database or
web-site/service). This can include both global application
settings such as the name of the institution running the app, or
certain business-rules; and global user settings such as name,
general preferences, colorschemes, etc.

machine-specific settings:
this relates to things like particular hardware configurations
(path to the CD drive, resource-names/configurations for things
like barcode/mag-stripe scanners, etc), or which server to
connect to. I usually store these in my application directory on
Win32, or in /etc on *nix boxes.

User-specific per-machine settings:
This can include things like preferred window-layout (which may
change depending on screen-size), stored
passwords/authentication, cache-locations,
local document stores, etc.


There's one other odd-ball category I've seen but not used:
portable storage on a USB drive. It sorta crosses these
boundaries being a bit of each (it's USB-drive specific, but can
be moved from machine to machine).


Choose your best storage location by thinking what a user/admin
would want for each setting. Is it a global setting that all
users need? put it in a network store. Is it something that
pertains to a particular machine? store it in either a
machine-global repository or a user-specific repository accordingly.

-tkc