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Use user-specified custom cache directory #10244
Description
As @bsipocz asked in #5828 (comment), "I run into this again today, and it seems we can change the config dir, but not the cache dir? If I misunderstand the situation, then we probably need to add more examples to the config dir, one especially for the case of the custom cache dir."
There is an option to change cache directory but has to be via XDG_CACHE_HOME. However, on Linux, changing it affects system-wide setting.
Maybe @bsipocz can clarify if this is a matter of documentation of improving https://docs.astropy.org/en/latest/config/index.html#astropy-config and/or https://docs.astropy.org/en/latest/utils/data.html . Or XDG_CACHE_HOME is simply insufficient.
Might also be relevant:
- Why doesn't astropy use ~/.config/astropy by default (on Unix-like systems)? #6803
- Cache for test files #8748
- Persist astropy cache #9557
- Config woes meta-ticket - add ASTROPY_CONFIG_DIR and ASTROPY_CACHE_DIR #10738
- Let user define cache location #17507
Previous unmerged attempts:
Activity
[-]Use user-specified cache directory[/-][+]Use user-specified custom cache directory[/+]bsipocz commentedon Sep 10, 2025
Hmm, I run into this again when I was trying to find the docs to show how to config the cache to be at a user specified location. Apparently it's still not possible?
bsipocz commentedon Sep 10, 2025
Use case: this would be extremely useful in systems where one has a limited home directory space but works with big datasets (either HPC type systems, or in my case a cloud based project like NASA's Fornax) --> right now what we can recommend to them is to use
cache=False, and that is not great.I would recommend this to be put on the list of the long standing feature requests that are unlikely to be picked up by volunteers, but that have widespread impact for user experience of data providers.
pllim commentedon Sep 10, 2025
Wow I totally forgot about this and opened #17507 which is probably duplicate.
bsipocz commentedon Sep 10, 2025
And so many others, too, from here but also from across of astroquery. Thanks for adding the xrefs into the OP above :)