.roamerrc file instead of environment variables

[abaldwin88]

[skiningham]

Looks like the values to load from .roamerrc are just: ROAMER_DATA_PATH and ROAMER_EDITOR. They’re used in three places: roamer/constant.py, roamer/file_edit.py, and tests/test_integration.py. I’d probably move the editor selection into the constants file too. Thoughts?

[abaldwin88]

Correct those are the two values that need to be moved. Yes the editor selection belongs in the constants file. Good catch!

[KillTheMule]

Imho you should consider xdg compliance (https://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html). Not sure how hard that is, though :)

[abaldwin88]

Here's a general outline of the direction I'd like to take. I want this to be a collaboration so please comment if you have a differing opinion.

We should follow the XDG Specification. https://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html

We can add this package as a dependency... https://github.com/srstevenson/xdg

If it's helpful we can loosely base this the way Ranger does it... https://github.com/ranger/ranger/blob/d861ba27b25a32aacb845eb33b6c9ce95cb33356/ranger/ext/rifle.py#L383-L407

For the actual layout of the config file my preference would be to follow INI file structure as that seems to be the most widely adopted. I do think forcing users to include a [section] is crufty for a tool like roamer.

.roamerrc example...

ROAMER_EDITOR=emacs
# comment line
OPTIONS=--skip-approval,--future-other-flag

We can use configparser library to get most of logic but we'll need to work around the expectation of sections.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2885190/using-pythons-configparser-to-read-a-file-without-section-name

[alex-bender]

Yeah, following XDG Specification is great, but I think that use additional package is overkill for the ~10 lines.

I see two options if config file does not exists at XDG dirs:

1. create it there
2. check somewhere else, for example here: ~/.config/roamer

As about .rc file itself -- at least for now It would be enough to have plain text file, and parse it without libs.

[alex-bender]

@abaldwin88 so what about Windows ~~~and what to do if there is no $XDG_CONFIG_HOME var~~~?

Update

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME defines the base directory relative to which user specific configuration files should be stored. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is either not set or empty, a default equal to $HOME/.config should be used.

[abaldwin88]

Yep the spec has a default location to use when the var isn't set.

Windows is only supported in roamer using the ubuntu subsystem. So using $HOME/.config should work fine. I have a windows box I'll test it on before merging.

Add dependencies at your discretion. If you can write something simple that covers our bases then let's add it directly.

[alex-bender]

@abaldwin88 Just want to say that I've got pretty busy days and that's why I didn't implement it yet. But I'm looking forward for doing it.