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

[Mattias Gaertner]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:51:10 +0100
Tom Verhoeff <T.Verhoeff at tue.nl> wrote:

> I was unable to find (in the wiki/FAQ) where Lazarus stores its global
> settings/options (the ones that are not project-specific and don't go
> into *.lpi).

Because no one needed general information about them yet. See below.

 
> Where does Lazarus look for these options, in what order?
> This is most likely platform dependent.
> 
> On my Mac, they appear to be stored in several XML files located
> in ~/.lazarus/

Yes.
(There are some ideas to change this to a more mac like directory.)

> If I find out, where would be an appropriate place to document
> this in the wiki?  It is something to put in IDE documentation,
> but I had also hoped to find it under development documentation.

IMO it should go to development documentation, because these files are
almost only edited by the IDE itself. I never edited them myself
manually.
I would even say: If you need to edit/inspect them, then you found a
bug.


> To get some more detailed picture, can someone comment on each of
> the following files/directories that I find in ~/.lazarus/
> 

bin/ - the IDE compiles itself here, if the source directory is readonly

cleandirectorydialog.xml  - the dlg wih the same name

codeexploreroptions.xml   - the wnd with the same name

compilertest.pas        - auto generated, used to test/query compiler

editoroptions.xml       - Environment > options > Editor ... 

environmentoptions.xml - Environment > options > general ...

helpoptions.xml - Help > Configure help ...

idemake.cfg - the fpc cfg used for compiling the IDE

includelinks.xml - what files were included by what file, needed to
find the unit of an include file 

inputhistory.xml - various history lists of comboboxes/edit fields

lazarus.dci > Environment > Code

templates ... lib/ - if a package is readonly the IDE uses this
directory instead for output 

miscellaneousoptions.xml - IDE build options and some minors

packagefiles.xml - View > IDE internals

protocol.xml - IDE start log, used to not crash a second time due to a
buggy project/package staticpackages.inc - the installed packages as
uses section


Some packages create their own config files. For example:

templates/ - used by the projecttemplates package. Tools > Project
templates options


Mattias