Configuring GWpy from the environment

GWpy can be configured by setting environment variables at run time.

Environment variables

The following variables are understood:

GWpy environment variables

Variable	Type	Default	Purpose
GWPY_CACHE	Bool	False	Whether to cache downloaded files from GWOSC to prevent repeated downloads
GWPY_FRAME_LIBRARY	String	False	The library to prefer when reading GWF data, one of "FrameCPP", "FrameL", "LALFrame" (case insensitive)
GWPY_INIT_LOGGING	Bool	False	Whether to configure the logging system when GWpy starts
GWPY_LOG_DATEFMT	String	"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%f%z"	The format to use when printing datetimes in log messages, see logging-basic-tutorial.
GWPY_LOG_FORMAT	String	"%(asctime)s:%(name)s:%(levelname)s:%(message)s"	The format to use when emitting log messages, see logging-basic-tutorial.
GWPY_LOG_LEVEL	String or Number	0	The logging level to use, see Logging Levels. Default is 0 to supress all log messages.
GWPY_RCPARAMS	Bool	False	Whether to update matplotlib.rcParams with custom GWpy defaults for rendering images
GWPY_USETEX	Bool	False	Whether to use LaTeX when rendering images, only used when GWPY_RCPARAMS is True

Boolean variables

Many of the variables are boolean switches, meaning they just tell GWpy to do something, or not to do something. The following values match as True:

Truthy values

The following string values match as True:

• 'y'

• 'yes'

• '1'

• 'true'

Falsy values

And these match as False:

• 'n'

• 'no'

• '0'

• 'false'

The matching is case-independent, so, for example, 'TRUE' will match as True.