Climate-REF / Climate-REF/climate-ref

ESMValTool user configuration files are not ignored by the REF

Open
#315 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
Python
Stars
26
Forks
14
Avg merge
1d 10h
Merged PRs (30d)
36

Description

## The problem

Currently, ESMValTool diagnostics are invoked with the [`--config-dir`](https://github.com/Climate-REF/climate-ref/blob/8c26336e4cc6cfa44a165d141602f6ebd5b01494/packages/climate-ref-esmvaltool/src/climate_ref_esmvaltool/diagnostics/base.py#L145) option. This will NOT prevent ESMValTool from parsing user configuration files at `~/.config/esmvaltool/` (see [here](https://docs.esmvaltool.org/projects/ESMValCore/en/latest/quickstart/configure.html#yaml-files)).

This might lead to errors during REF runs or unit tests if the user specified invalid or non-suitable (e.g., additional rootpaths) options in their own configuration file.

## Definition of "done"

ESMValTool should be "encapsulated" within the REF, i.e., tests and runs should be independent from potential ESMValTool user configuration files and not fail because of bad ESMValTool user configuration files.

## Additional context

This can be solved fairly easily by using the environment variable `ESMVALTOOL_CONFIG_DIR` instead of the command line option `--config_dir`. In addition, it would be nice to ensure that potential old configuration files are ignored (requires https://github.com/ESMValGroup/ESMValCore/pull/2736).

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.