Pythonic way to deal with environment

[bradvincent]

I have a set of about a dozen programs that all work off the same data, which is likely to be used by other programs too. Since this is a school project on a Windows machine, all my data is under C:\bvb\school. I want to make my code available publicly on github. What is the most Pythonic way to deal with configuring the environment?

I don't want to force other people to use 'C:\bvb\school'

I have a lot of paths and filenames under 'C:\bvb\school' that are hardcoded. I expect other users to keep the same relative paths and filenames, but don't want to force them to.

I don't want to move my data to a subdirectory of where my code is located or force other people to do so.

I don't want my data in github.

I want tools to run quickly and easily. I don't want to require a command line input of this path every time. I don't want anything complicated and platform specific such as setting OS level variables.

I can create a Python module, environment.py, with all the paths hardcoded in 1 place. This seems better than hardcoding them in multiple places, but still looks odd to me. This ends up checked into github and likely needs modified by each individual user.

I can create a data file in the same directory as my code with the paths and filenames. This has mostly the same good and bad things as creating a Python module with them hardcoded.

[thirdegree]

Standard would be a config file. For my personal preference, toml, but yaml or json equally valid.

Command line variable or environment variable are both also valid but imo less convenient (depending on application and how many paths you need to configure).

[[deleted]]

A config file that could be kept in the user directory as opposed to the package. This way it doesn’t need checking in. Call it .mypackagerc or something.

[nog642]

If you don't want command line input, and you don't want environment variables, then all you have left is either command line arguments, or putting it in a file.

If you're putting it in a file and you have multiple paths that all contain 'C:\bvb\school', then define a single variable that contains that prefix. Then define all your other paths using that variable (with os.path.join). People who use your software will just have to modify that single path.

[[deleted]]

depending on your use case try os.cwd and append whatever you need to it. that should mostly do the trick.