set MXNET_DATA_DIR as base for downloaded models through base.data_dir()

docs/faq/env_var.md

@@ -126,6 +126,11 @@ When USE_PROFILER is enabled in Makefile or CMake, the following environments ca
   - Values: String ```(default='https://apache-mxnet.s3-accelerate.dualstack.amazonaws.com/'```
   - The repository url to be used for Gluon datasets and pre-trained models.
 
+* MXNET_DATA_DIR
+  - Data directory in the filesystem for storage, for example when downloading gluon models.
+  - Default in *nix is .local/share/mxnet APPDATA/mxnet in windows, XDG_DATA_HOME/mxnet if
+    XDG_DATA_HOME is set.
+
 Settings for Minimum Memory Usage
 ---------------------------------
 - Make sure ```min(MXNET_EXEC_NUM_TEMP, MXNET_GPU_WORKER_NTHREADS) = 1```

python/mxnet/base.py

@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@
 import warnings
 import inspect
 import numpy as np
+import platform
 from . import libinfo
 warnings.filterwarnings('default', category=DeprecationWarning)
 
@@ -47,6 +48,32 @@
     integer_types = (int, long, np.int32, np.int64)
     py_str = lambda x: x
 
+
+def data_dir_default():
+    """
+
+    :return: default data directory depending on the platform and environment variables
+    """
+    system = platform.system()
+    if system == 'Windows':
+        return os.environ.get('APPDATA')
+    elif system == 'Linux' or system == 'Darwin':
+        if 'XDG_DATA_HOME'in os.environ:
+            return os.path.join(os.environ['XDG_DATA_HOME'], 'mxnet')
+        else:
+            return os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), '.local', 'share', 'mxnet')
+    else:
+        return os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), '.mxnet')
+
+
+def data_dir():
+    """
+
+    :return: data directory in the filesystem for storage, for example when downloading models
+    """
+    return os.getenv('MXNET_DATA_DIR', data_dir_default())
+
+
 class _NullType(object):
     """Placeholder for arguments"""
     def __repr__(self):

python/mxnet/contrib/text/embedding.py

@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@
 from . import vocab
 from ... import ndarray as nd
 from ... import registry
+from ... import base
 
 
 def register(embedding_cls):
@@ -496,7 +497,7 @@ class GloVe(_TokenEmbedding):
     ----------
     pretrained_file_name : str, default 'glove.840B.300d.txt'
         The name of the pre-trained token embedding file.
-    embedding_root : str, default os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'embeddings')
+    embedding_root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/embeddings
         The root directory for storing embedding-related files.
     init_unknown_vec : callback
         The callback used to initialize the embedding vector for the unknown token.
@@ -541,7 +542,7 @@ def _get_download_file_name(cls, pretrained_file_name):
         return archive
 
     def __init__(self, pretrained_file_name='glove.840B.300d.txt',
-                 embedding_root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'embeddings'),
+                 embedding_root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(),'embeddings'),
                  init_unknown_vec=nd.zeros, vocabulary=None, **kwargs):
         GloVe._check_pretrained_file_names(pretrained_file_name)
 
@@ -600,7 +601,7 @@ class FastText(_TokenEmbedding):
     ----------
     pretrained_file_name : str, default 'wiki.en.vec'
         The name of the pre-trained token embedding file.
-    embedding_root : str, default os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'embeddings')
+    embedding_root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/embeddings
         The root directory for storing embedding-related files.
     init_unknown_vec : callback
         The callback used to initialize the embedding vector for the unknown token.
@@ -642,7 +643,7 @@ def _get_download_file_name(cls, pretrained_file_name):
         return '.'.join(pretrained_file_name.split('.')[:-1])+'.zip'
 
     def __init__(self, pretrained_file_name='wiki.simple.vec',
-                 embedding_root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'embeddings'),
+                 embedding_root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'embeddings'),
                  init_unknown_vec=nd.zeros, vocabulary=None, **kwargs):
         FastText._check_pretrained_file_names(pretrained_file_name)
 

python/mxnet/gluon/contrib/data/text.py

@@ -30,8 +30,7 @@
 from ...data import dataset
 from ...utils import download, check_sha1, _get_repo_file_url
 from ....contrib import text
-from .... import nd
-
+from .... import nd, base
 
 class _LanguageModelDataset(dataset._DownloadedDataset): # pylint: disable=abstract-method
     def __init__(self, root, namespace, vocabulary):
@@ -116,7 +115,7 @@ class WikiText2(_WikiText):
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/datasets/wikitext-2'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/datasets/wikitext-2
         Path to temp folder for storing data.
     segment : str, default 'train'
         Dataset segment. Options are 'train', 'validation', 'test'.
@@ -127,7 +126,7 @@ class WikiText2(_WikiText):
         The sequence length of each sample, regardless of the sentence boundary.
 
     """
-    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'datasets', 'wikitext-2'),
+    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'datasets', 'wikitext-2'),
                  segment='train', vocab=None, seq_len=35):
         self._archive_file = ('wikitext-2-v1.zip', '3c914d17d80b1459be871a5039ac23e752a53cbe')
         self._data_file = {'train': ('wiki.train.tokens',
@@ -154,7 +153,7 @@ class WikiText103(_WikiText):
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/datasets/wikitext-103'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/datasets/wikitext-103
         Path to temp folder for storing data.
     segment : str, default 'train'
         Dataset segment. Options are 'train', 'validation', 'test'.
@@ -164,7 +163,7 @@ class WikiText103(_WikiText):
     seq_len : int, default 35
         The sequence length of each sample, regardless of the sentence boundary.
     """
-    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'datasets', 'wikitext-103'),
+    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'datasets', 'wikitext-103'),
                  segment='train', vocab=None, seq_len=35):
         self._archive_file = ('wikitext-103-v1.zip', '0aec09a7537b58d4bb65362fee27650eeaba625a')
         self._data_file = {'train': ('wiki.train.tokens',

python/mxnet/gluon/data/vision/datasets.py

@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@
 
 from .. import dataset
 from ...utils import download, check_sha1, _get_repo_file_url
-from .... import nd, image, recordio
+from .... import nd, image, recordio, base
 
 
 class MNIST(dataset._DownloadedDataset):
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ class MNIST(dataset._DownloadedDataset):
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/datasets/mnist'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/datasets/mnist
         Path to temp folder for storing data.
     train : bool, default True
         Whether to load the training or testing set.
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ class MNIST(dataset._DownloadedDataset):
         transform=lambda data, label: (data.astype(np.float32)/255, label)
 
     """
-    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'datasets', 'mnist'),
+    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'datasets', 'mnist'),
                  train=True, transform=None):
         self._train = train
         self._train_data = ('train-images-idx3-ubyte.gz',
@@ -101,7 +101,7 @@ class FashionMNIST(MNIST):
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/datasets/fashion-mnist'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/datasets/fashion-mnist'
         Path to temp folder for storing data.
     train : bool, default True
         Whether to load the training or testing set.
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ class FashionMNIST(MNIST):
         transform=lambda data, label: (data.astype(np.float32)/255, label)
 
     """
-    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'datasets', 'fashion-mnist'),
+    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'datasets', 'fashion-mnist'),
                  train=True, transform=None):
         self._train = train
         self._train_data = ('train-images-idx3-ubyte.gz',
@@ -134,7 +134,7 @@ class CIFAR10(dataset._DownloadedDataset):
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/datasets/cifar10'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/datasets/cifar10
         Path to temp folder for storing data.
     train : bool, default True
         Whether to load the training or testing set.
@@ -145,7 +145,7 @@ class CIFAR10(dataset._DownloadedDataset):
         transform=lambda data, label: (data.astype(np.float32)/255, label)
 
     """
-    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'datasets', 'cifar10'),
+    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'datasets', 'cifar10'),
                  train=True, transform=None):
         self._train = train
         self._archive_file = ('cifar-10-binary.tar.gz', 'fab780a1e191a7eda0f345501ccd62d20f7ed891')
@@ -197,7 +197,7 @@ class CIFAR100(CIFAR10):
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/datasets/cifar100'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/datasets/cifar100
         Path to temp folder for storing data.
     fine_label : bool, default False
         Whether to load the fine-grained (100 classes) or coarse-grained (20 super-classes) labels.
@@ -210,7 +210,7 @@ class CIFAR100(CIFAR10):
         transform=lambda data, label: (data.astype(np.float32)/255, label)
 
     """
-    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'datasets', 'cifar100'),
+    def __init__(self, root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'datasets', 'cifar100'),
                  fine_label=False, train=True, transform=None):
         self._train = train
         self._archive_file = ('cifar-100-binary.tar.gz', 'a0bb982c76b83111308126cc779a992fa506b90b')

python/mxnet/gluon/model_zoo/model_store.py

@@ -21,8 +21,10 @@
 __all__ = ['get_model_file', 'purge']
 import os
 import zipfile
+import logging
 
 from ..utils import download, check_sha1
+from ... import base
 
 _model_sha1 = {name: checksum for checksum, name in [
     ('44335d1f0046b328243b32a26a4fbd62d9057b45', 'alexnet'),
@@ -68,7 +70,7 @@ def short_hash(name):
         raise ValueError('Pretrained model for {name} is not available.'.format(name=name))
     return _model_sha1[name][:8]
 
-def get_model_file(name, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'models')):
+def get_model_file(name, root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'models')):
     r"""Return location for the pretrained on local file system.
 
     This function will download from online model zoo when model cannot be found or has mismatch.
@@ -78,7 +80,7 @@ def get_model_file(name, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'models')):
     ----------
     name : str
         Name of the model.
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/models
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
 
     Returns
@@ -95,12 +97,11 @@ def get_model_file(name, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'models')):
         if check_sha1(file_path, sha1_hash):
             return file_path
         else:
-            print('Mismatch in the content of model file detected. Downloading again.')
+            logging.warn('Mismatch in the content of model file detected. Downloading again.')
     else:
-        print('Model file is not found. Downloading.')
+        logging.info('Model file not found. Downloading to %s.', file_path)
 
-    if not os.path.exists(root):
-        os.makedirs(root)
+    os.makedirs(root, exist_ok=True)
 
     zip_file_path = os.path.join(root, file_name+'.zip')
     repo_url = os.environ.get('MXNET_GLUON_REPO', apache_repo_url)
@@ -118,12 +119,12 @@ def get_model_file(name, root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'models')):
     else:
         raise ValueError('Downloaded file has different hash. Please try again.')
 
-def purge(root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'models')):
+def purge(root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'models')):
     r"""Purge all pretrained model files in local file store.
 
     Parameters
     ----------
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default '$MXNET_DATA_DIR/models'
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
     """
     root = os.path.expanduser(root)

python/mxnet/gluon/model_zoo/vision/__init__.py

@@ -101,7 +101,7 @@ def get_model(name, **kwargs):
         Number of classes for the output layer.
     ctx : Context, default CPU
         The context in which to load the pretrained weights.
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default '$MXNET_DATA_DIR/models'
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
 
     Returns

python/mxnet/gluon/model_zoo/vision/alexnet.py

@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@
 from ....context import cpu
 from ...block import HybridBlock
 from ... import nn
+from .... import base
 
 # Net
 class AlexNet(HybridBlock):
@@ -68,7 +69,7 @@ def hybrid_forward(self, F, x):
 
 # Constructor
 def alexnet(pretrained=False, ctx=cpu(),
-            root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'models'), **kwargs):
+            root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'models'), **kwargs):
     r"""AlexNet model from the `"One weird trick..." <https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.5997>`_ paper.
 
     Parameters
@@ -77,7 +78,7 @@ def alexnet(pretrained=False, ctx=cpu(),
         Whether to load the pretrained weights for model.
     ctx : Context, default CPU
         The context in which to load the pretrained weights.
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/models
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
     """
     net = AlexNet(**kwargs)

python/mxnet/gluon/model_zoo/vision/densenet.py

@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@
 from ...block import HybridBlock
 from ... import nn
 from ...contrib.nn import HybridConcurrent, Identity
+from .... import base
 
 # Helpers
 def _make_dense_block(num_layers, bn_size, growth_rate, dropout, stage_index):
@@ -122,7 +123,7 @@ def hybrid_forward(self, F, x):
 
 # Constructor
 def get_densenet(num_layers, pretrained=False, ctx=cpu(),
-                 root=os.path.join('~', '.mxnet', 'models'), **kwargs):
+                 root=os.path.join(base.data_dir(), 'models'), **kwargs):
     r"""Densenet-BC model from the
     `"Densely Connected Convolutional Networks" <https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.06993.pdf>`_ paper.
 
@@ -134,7 +135,7 @@ def get_densenet(num_layers, pretrained=False, ctx=cpu(),
         Whether to load the pretrained weights for model.
     ctx : Context, default CPU
         The context in which to load the pretrained weights.
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default $MXNET_DATA_DIR/models
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
     """
     num_init_features, growth_rate, block_config = densenet_spec[num_layers]
@@ -154,7 +155,7 @@ def densenet121(**kwargs):
         Whether to load the pretrained weights for model.
     ctx : Context, default CPU
         The context in which to load the pretrained weights.
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default '$MXNET_DATA_DIR/models'
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
     """
     return get_densenet(121, **kwargs)
@@ -169,7 +170,7 @@ def densenet161(**kwargs):
         Whether to load the pretrained weights for model.
     ctx : Context, default CPU
         The context in which to load the pretrained weights.
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default '$MXNET_DATA_DIR/models'
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
     """
     return get_densenet(161, **kwargs)
@@ -184,7 +185,7 @@ def densenet169(**kwargs):
         Whether to load the pretrained weights for model.
     ctx : Context, default CPU
         The context in which to load the pretrained weights.
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default '$MXNET_DATA_DIR/models'
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
     """
     return get_densenet(169, **kwargs)
@@ -199,7 +200,7 @@ def densenet201(**kwargs):
         Whether to load the pretrained weights for model.
     ctx : Context, default CPU
         The context in which to load the pretrained weights.
-    root : str, default '~/.mxnet/models'
+    root : str, default '$MXNET_DATA_DIR/models'
         Location for keeping the model parameters.
     """
     return get_densenet(201, **kwargs)