[Lazarus] build macros - what is it?

[Bernd Kreuss]

Am 28.09.2010 10:42, schrieb Bo Berglund:
> So to summarize there *is* a convention on the file location depending
> on if the data are user specific or global. The name of the file is
> the application name preceded by a period. No extension.

Not exactly.

E.g.
- FPC uses a .fpc.cfg in your home directory
- Lazarus uses the directory .lazarus by default
- Firefox has its own directory in .mozilla/firefox

You are rather free here. The functions Žilvinas and I mentioned are 
returning a filename or a directory name (depending on the called 
function) in the .config directory (which is also used by other 
applications as well).

> But there is no convention regarding the format of this file apart
> from it being in ASCII only.

Not even that is a convention. As said you can use what you see fit. You 
can also use UTF-8 files or binary files (altough the user can't edit 
the seconds ones if you don't provide the tools for them).

>
> So I could create an IniFile class to handle the config and let it
> have methods for reading/writing private and global config data into a
> file which it determines by itself depending on its call. Then I would
> be doing the right thing? I could use the format of windows ini files
> (which we are accustomed to) and still be OK on Linux...

But don't forget that the global config in "/etc" is normally read only. 
You should only create it during the installation phase (which is done 
by a administrator/root account and thus has the needed rights.

Sidenote: You can use the GetAppConfigDir/File functions on Windows as 
well and they will return you the directories where an applications 
should put it's configuration data normally (instead of the program 
directory).

Regards,
Sven