[Lazarus] Lazarus config woes

[Reimar Grabowski]

On Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:32:11 +0200
Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1 at aol.com> wrote:

> You possibly forget that then you'll have to initialize all those added 
> configs, and when you want to change something, for all installations, 
> every single config has to be edited - a maintenance nightmare :-(
Maintenance nightmare?
This starts to get ridiculous. How often do you change config per hand? Normally you do it from inside your programs. And if you really need to change many config files directly I heard perl is quite capable of parsing stuff and changing files. Rumor has it that even bash, batch files or higher level programming languages can be used to automate things you do not want to do by hand.
Regarding Lazarus, if you talk about maintenance of two (or more) different Lazarus/FPC versions what is so hard about writing a start up script?
Yes, the svn version will have problems if you have another lazarus installed and not specified a new config directory. As it sounds like that the config will be versioned there is no problem at all. Lazarus warns you at startup and you can give the command line option on next start.
Btw I cannot stand the 'think of the newbies' argument anymore. Mess everything up to satisfy the needs of the unknown noob, no thanks.
For me this discussion is a non issue. Config files in app directories are a no go, no discussion. Write two lines in the wiki (svn install) that you must specify a different config directory if you intend to use this install in parallel to another one. Newbie has problems, tell him to RTFM, issue solved.
We are talking about software developers here not Joe User.

just my 2 cents

R.
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