[Lazarus] Where does Lazarus store/look for global settings/options?

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Mattias Gaertner schrieb:

>> http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Getting_Lazarus
> 
> This page should be renamed to something like how to get the
> development sources of lazarus. And the other hints should be moved to
> the installation page:
> http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Installing_Lazarus
> 
> There the compilation of the IDE is described.

Thanks, this page seems to match my needs better :-)

In detail the USB drive instructions look very interesting, for having 
Lazarus installed in both the release and trunk versions.

Nonetheless I wonder:

- When I want to have multiple Lazarus installations on the same 
machine, why can't that be done from an existing Lazarus installation? 
Lazarus already can rebuild itself, to include required packages. What 
would be required to use that existing feature to rebuild Lazarus after 
changes to the Lazarus source code? [I already have 2 Lazarus icons on 
my desktop, one for the "naked" (distributed) version, and one for the 
rebuilt one.]

- Similar for applications, developed with fpc/Lazarus. When I e.g. work 
on PasDoc, I want to have both the "official" and trunk/branch versions 
available, for reference purposes. I'm absolutely lost (on Linux), how 
the test suites find their corresponding program file.

- Why is a Lazarus installation so different from the installation of 
Windows applications, conforming to the Windows guidelines? The proper 
use of the defined application and user directories would allow for 
multiple (common or user-specific) installations, and more. Please note 
that I understand the advantages of an installation that bypasses common 
Windows policies, but many users would be happy with a "standard" 
installation, as appropriate for every OS (not only for Windows).

- I'm missing a GUI tool for managing the Lazarus installation(s). The 
intended audience certainly are GUI people, not command line freaks!
I understand that such a tool must be platform specific, to some degree, 
but it might be easier to provide such tools, instead of writing 
detailed command line procedures for the different platforms. If 
somebodey can provide a platform independent skeleton for such a tool, 
I'm willing to add the Windows specific part to it.

DoDi