Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Originally from: http://sourceforge.net/p/pywikipediabot/bugs/1224/
Reported by: purodha
Created on: 2010-08-22 21:57:45
Subject: -dir: paramter not working, variable _base_dir has unclear e
Assigned to: purodha
Original description:
In the current svn verision \(rev 8433\) there is a huge mess around the parameter -dir.
It is not processed in the place where all general parameters are - wikipedia.handleArgs\(\)
It is processed in wikipediatools an then deleted from the arguemnt list.
Since this code is executed multiple times \(e.g. 3 times in interwiki.py\) it does different
and unwanted things from the 2nd call on.
We see repeated error messages about missing config files being created where there
should be none. Login information is sought at the wrong place, requiring one to log
in for each change made by interwiki.py, e.g.

config.py processed the -dir parameter and puts it into a variable \_base\_dir
This variable is being used inconsistently as:
\- the directory where user\_config is sought \(only during the 1st trip through\),
\- the directory where family configurations are expected,
\- the directory where programs are to be found,
\- the directory where where a .svn subdirectory is expected,
which cannot be all identical if you are running multiple bots having
to have different user\_config.py files.

This all needs cleanup.

Since config data is processed before command line parameters are parsed,
this is not straigthforward. When there can be a -dir parameter, config processing
must not occur before it has been seen, or is known not to be used.

Since the current handling is not working anyways, and multiple processing is a waste
anyways, I suggest to move the entire config handling to wikipedia.handleArgs\(\)
and make sure, it only happens once. This would likely obsolete most or all of the
contents of wikipediatools.py