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+.. _opts:
+
+====================
+Salt opts dictionary
+====================
+
+It is very common in the Salt codebase to see `opts` referred to in a number of
+contexts.
+
+For example, it can be seen as `__opts__` in certain cases, or simple as `opts`
+as an argument to a function in others.
+
+Simply put, this data structure is simply a dictionary of Salt's runtime
+configuration information that's passed around in order for functions to
+know how Salt is configured.
+
+When writing Python code to use specific parts of Salt, it may become necessary
+to initialize a copy of `opts` from scratch in order to have it available for a
+given function.
+
+To do so, use the utility functions available in `salt.config` to do so.
+
+As an example, here is how one might generate and print an options dictionary
+for a minion instance:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    import salt.config
+    opts = salt.config.minion_config('/etc/salt/minion')
+    print(opts)
+
+To generate and display `opts` for a master, the process is similar:
+
+.. code-block:: python
+
+    import salt.config
+    opts = salt.config.master_config('/etc/salt/master')
+    print(opts)