Where can I store extracted program files from a Python package?

Question

I have written a Python package hwrt which comes with a model.tar file. Neither the file itself nor the contents should bother users (they can take a look at it, it's not a secret - but they don't need it).

I need to work with files in that archive. To do so, I extract the contents and work with them:

import tarfile
tar = tarfile.open('model.tar in python package')
tar.extractall()
tar.close()
[... work with those files ...]

This works. However, I see two problems with this approach:

1. The model.tar get extracted every time.
2. The contained files get placed in the current working directory which might not be expected by the user.

To solve problem (2), it seems to me that creating a temporary folder in tempfile.gettempdir() would be the cleanest solution. However, I am not sure if that is the place where this should be done.

Are there other archive formats where I can access the contents of the archive directly? Is there a directory where I can place files for my Python package (for all users) after it was installed?

Answer 1

If the file is only ~10MB, just read it into RAM. Your later thousands of accesses will thank you.

If you want to only unpack the first time, you have several options:

• Unpack at install time into the source directory

• Unpack once into a local .cache directory

If you can bear unpacking once per run, use tempfile.gettempdir.