[Lazarus] Lazarus config woes

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Mattias Gaertner schrieb:

>> BTW, my experiments indicate that putting an environmentoptions.xml into 
>> the Lazarus directory (scp) will make the IDE use these settings, but 
>> only if there exists no config in the default location. The full config 
>> then is written back to the *default* location (pcp), not into the 
>> Lazarus directory.
> 
> Yes, that's what I meant with used as template.

Okay, that explains a lot :-)

Remains to mention that the "template" term has to be explained to the 
user. Normally a template is used to create *different* versions 
(installations) from it, but Lazarus - by default - does it the opposite 
way: templates are taken from an *installation*, and the result is put 
into a *common* place.

This behaviour makes sense only because -pcp overwrites the *common* 
place, so that effectively *no* place exists where common 
(installation-independent) templates or settings can be stored :-(


Now I understand why it is near impossible to convince the inventors of 
that model, that some users would prefer to have their common settings 
in an common place, while every single installation only should hold 
overrides of these common settings. The argument, that these users most 
probably will disagree about *what* should be common, is a valid one, so 
that it is the *simplest* solution for the Lazarus team to have 
everything in a separate config. Nonetheless that solution sucks :-(



>> Why does the IDE store an updated config *always* in the default 
>> directory, instead in the same directory from which (parts of) the 
>> config have been loaded before?
> 
> If you want that you can set pcp and scp to the same directory.

That's not a solution of the problem, because then still no place 
exists, where defaults could be stored - they are overwritten when 
pcp=scp :-(

DoDi