pylint default filepath in ALE

Question

I am trying to set up my pylintrc file in vim, but am having some difficulty getting it to read from the correct path. It seems to work when I have the file in the directory that contains the vim file I am editing, but if I put it into my vim directory, which is:

~/.vim/.pylintrc

It doesn't recognize it. How do I tell vim to read the pylintrc file from that directory? The only settings I have related to it are:

Plug 'dense-analysis/ale'
let b:ale_linters = ['pylint', 'mypy']

Note: my settings currently work (when the file is in the main directory). However, I am wondering how I can change from where it reads the settings/path.

[Cross-posted from SO (no answers)]

Answer 1

Knowing from :help ale-python-pylint that we want to adjust g:ale_python_pylint_options to include --rcfile, I would drop

let g:ale_python_pylint_options = '--rcfile '.<filename>

in wherever the right place is for you. That could be wherever you configure ALE, if a single setting is right; or, it could be in an ftplugin (use b:…) if you need to change the name based on the specific file/project/whatever.

For the specific ~/.vim/.pylintrc, you should be able to do

let g:ale_python_pylint_options = '--rcfile '.expand('~/.vim/.pylintrc')

It's possible expand() isn't necessary if pylint will properly tilde-expand its arguments, but I haven't tested that (a smoke-test would be to run something like sh -c 'pylint --rcfile '\''~/.vim/.pylintrc'\'' <other options>' and see if it picks up your settings; run it in your own shell if single-quotes disable all expansion: pylint --rcfile '~/.vim/pylintrc' <other options>).