Location to put user configuration files in windows

Question

I\'m writing a python library that has a per-user configuration file that can be edited by the user of the library. The library also generates logging files. On *nix, the

Answer 1

The python appdirs package does a nice job of finding the standard place for application data on various platforms. E.g. for Windows it uses the English XP location:

C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\Local Settings\<AppAuthor>\<AppName>

and on Linux it follows the XDG standard:

 ~/.config/<appname>

Answer 2

On windows the user is not expected to configure an application using editable config files so there is no standard.
The standard for configuration which is editable using a GUI is the registry.

If you're using QT (or PyQT?) then you can use QSettings which provide an abstraction layer. On Linux it uses a config file and on windows is writes to the registry.

Answer 3

%APPDATA% is the right place for these (probably in a subdirectory for your library). Unfortunately a fair number of *nix apps ported to Windows don't respect that and I end up with .gem, .ssh, .VirtualBox, etc., folders cluttering up my home directory and not hidden by default as on *nix.

You can make it easy even for users that don't know much about the layout of the Windows directory structure by having a menu item (or similar) that opens the configuration file in an editor for them.

If possible, do provide a GUI front-end to the file, though, even if it's quite a simple one. Windows users will expect a Tools | Options menu item that brings up a dialog box allowing them to set options and will be non-plussed by not having one.