Figure out what to do with Windows Store Python

[ericoporto]

Windows Store Python redirects calls to user system directories. The redirected directory names are quite long and may reach the Windows path size limit.

It also creates confusion where directory paths in config don't match with real life

Interesting code from https://github.com/mu-editor/mu/pull/2292/files

import os

import sys
import tempfile
from functools import lru_cache
import platformdirs


# The default directory for application data (i.e., configuration).
DATA_DIR = platformdirs.user_data_dir(appname="mu", appauthor="python")
@lru_cache()
def get_data_dir():
    path = platformdirs.user_data_dir(appname="mu", appauthor="python")
    if sys.platform == "win32":
        # Locate the actual path for Windows by making a temporary file
        # then resolving the real path. Solves a bug in the Windows store
        # distribution of Python 3.8+
        # See https://github.com/mu-editor/mu/issues/2293
        os.makedirs(path, exist_ok=True)
        fd, tmp = tempfile.mkstemp(dir=path)
        realpath = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(tmp))
        os.close(fd)
        os.remove(tmp)
        return realpath
    else:
        return path

The caveat here is we really want to let any redirections happen when using Python over Wine. So we can't naively use the proposal above directly.

I have no idea if this is a bug or enhancement, but it's a problem.