matplotlib cannot find configuration file matplotlibrc

Question

I am using matplotlib 1.3.1 with python 3.4.0 on Ubuntu 14.04. I would like to use a matplotlibrc configuration file in .config/matplotlib/matplotlibrc . However it seems like matplotlib is unable to find it:

~$ ls ~/.config/matplotlib/
matplotlibrc
~$ python3
Python 3.4.0 (default, Apr 11 2014, 13:05:11) 
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import matplotlib
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/matplotlib/__init__.py:766: UserWarning: Could not find matplotlibrc; using defaults
  warnings.warn('Could not find matplotlibrc; using defaults')
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/matplotlib/__init__.py:882: UserWarning: could not find rc file; returning defaults
  warnings.warn(message)

The content of my matplotlibrc is the default one from here .

How can I make matplotlib find the configuration file?

EDIT:

>>> matplotlib.get_configdir()
'/home/<me>/.matplotlib'

Answer 1

From the docstring of matplotlib.get_configdir() I discovered that matplotlib will not look in ~/.config if .matplotlib/ exists.

So even though ~/.config/matplotlib/matplotlibrc exists, you should delete the ~/.matplotlib directory entirely.

Note that I also had to delete matplotlib's fontcache afterwards.

Answer 2

I found mine here without having to delete the .matplotlib dir

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/matplotlib/mpl-data/matplotlibrc