Programming

19061 readers

127 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

[Linux] Where to download script files to? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So, I'm making an install.sh script to download script files from GitHub to the user's system. I know downloading to the home directory (~/script_dir/) is typically frowned upon.

For context, this is a directory containing python files, README, requirements, etc. pip dependencies need to be installed before launch. The script would be executed through main.py.

Where would be a good place to download to that won't clutter the user's home directory?

Edit: The script is a CLI interface for yt-dlp to make it easier to use. So, it will download files to specified directories on the user's system.

Edit 2: Appreciate the responses. I forgot to mention this script has a config file it uses for certain parameters, such as default download directory for each category. If a config file doesn't exist it creates one in the script's directory and dumps the default values from a default config file (YAML).

Some of you are mentioning this could be a PyPI package. Would I still be able to read/write my config files if I made this a PyPI package?

top 12 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You shouldnt install python dependencies system wide, recent distros block running pip outside a virtual environment. Use pipx, it automates everything: https://pipx.pypa.io/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It creates a venv in the script directory and installs the dependencies that way.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

yeah that should just be a pip package instead, then install it any normal way

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Use dotfiles; ~/.local/script_dir/

Frankly, this is what pipx is for.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sounds like it could be published as a PyPI package, then used with uvx or pipx.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If I made this a PyPi package, would I be able to create a config file to read from it/have it read from a default config file and set that as the user config file?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

sure, you can store the config in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/your-app-name/ (the var usually defaults to ~/.config/).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Somehow nobody has mentioned that the executable script should reside in a location listed in the users path.

Add shebang Download to /usr/local/bin/ or at least symlink there.

Maybe package as pip package

Read a standard sometime people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

OP wrote they want to install dependencies as well, that's why it's a bit more complex situation. For python scripts without external dependencies it would work.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This is hard to say without knowing the use of the scripts. If it's something to be used as normal CLI tools, probably some place that's in the user's path. If it's something else, I would just have it download to the current working directory so that the user has the choice on where to put it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Updated the post to include more info, but it is a CLI app which helps simplify yt-dlp commands. It doesn't mess with any system files.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, I would create a directory in the current working directory and put it there.