The little things

It’s the little things that really matter in life.

If you’ve ever spent any time wrestling with Maya distribution, you’ve probably noticed that userSetup.py executes in an odd fashion: it’s not a module that gets imported, it’s basically a series of statements that get executed when Maya fires up. Unfortunately that also means that most of the usual strategies you’d use in python to find out where, exactly, you are running from is problematic. The usual python tricks like __file__ don’t work; and most of the time asking for os.getcwd() will point at your Maya program directory. Usually you end up running around looking at all the directories where Maya might be stashing a userSetup and trying to figure out which one is the one you are in`. It’s ugly.
However today, I actually found one which works. At least, I haven’t figured out how to break it yet.

import os, inspect
USER_SETUP_PATH = os.path.dirname(inspect.currentframe().f_code.co_filename)

Since I’ve tried to figure this one out on at least a hundred previous occasions, I am feeling unduly smug about this one.
PS, if you’re wondering why I care: this makes it really easy to do a simple install/uninstall of a userSetup.py / userSetup.zip combo with no environment variables or special rules.
PPS: Take that, Maya!