Re: [matplotlib-devel] Building documentation and matplotlibrc

[Benjamin R. <ben...@ou...>]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 11:15 AM, John Hunter <jd...@gm...> wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Benjamin Root <ben...@ou...> wrote:
>
> > I thought that problem was already addressed in a previous patch?  John,
> > could this be another "gremlin"?  Or did I mis-understand the whole issue
> > absolute path problem?
>
> My understanding is that because sphinx switches the current working
> directory during execution, this path must be absolute.  We could get
> around this by processing a relative path internally in mpl at rc load
> time, and converting it into an absolute path assuming the path is
> relative to the directory containing the rc file.
>
> JDH
>


I actually think that would be a better solution.  Python's os.path module
is very powerful with functions like isabs(), abspath(), expanduser(),
expandvars() and realpath().  Of course, one could easily go overboard with
this, but I am sure we could probably allow for something real simple like
expandvars() so that packagers could utilize environment variables for the
build process?

Ben Root