[Lazarus] Lazarus config woes

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be wrote:
> On Wed, 30 Mar 2011, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> 
>> michael.vancanneyt at wisa.be schrieb:
>>
>>>> IMO the IDE should look for a configuration in the current (EXE) 
>>>> directory first, and only into the common directory when no config 
>>>> can be found there.
>>>
>>> Well, definitely not on Unix. On unix, the EXE directory should never 
>>> contain config files.
>>
>> I dare to disagree. A SVN checkout is writeable, and this is where the 
>> EXE is stored, along with the related source files. Consequently the 
>> config should be stored there as well.
> 
> No, no and once more: no.
> 
> This is a typical Windows user reasoning which is total nonsense on unix.
> You should never ever leave a config file or an executable in a source
> directory, it's plain wrong to do so. I don't know a single unix 
> application
> that does this.
> 
> 
> Config files belong in 1 of 3 places:
> 
> under /etc/myapp
> under ~/.myapp
> under ~/config/myapp
> 
> If you want to support multiple configurations, create subdirectories of
> these directories, period.
> 
> Don't try to force Windows habits on Unix users.

I'm sorry, but I disagree. There are not three but FOUR places, where 
the first one is the information built into the executable during 
compilation.

If the implicit information in the executable (version of the compiler 
and location of the lazarus directory) doesn't match what's explicitly 
in the configuration files then the user needs to be told- this is not 
usually something which can be silently overridden.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]