[Lazarus] Lazarus config woes

[Martin]

On 31/03/2011 12:15, Hans-Peter Diettrich wrote:
> Michael Van Canneyt schrieb:
>> No unix tool does this. Not even when it is freshly (re)built from 
>> sources. And neither should Lazarus.
>>
>> I claimed no more, no less.
>
> I never said that Lazarus should *break* that convention.
If the convention is to "never do it", and then below you say, it's only 
a few lines of code, in order to do it, then I don't see the you "never 
said"....
>
> I only want a chance for removing the *need* for the explicit 
> specification of an pcp, on every Lazarus invocation. It won't break 
> anything and requires only a few lines in source code, when the IDE 
> searches for a config in the EXE directory, before starting the 
> standard search.

Anyway, another point.

This whole discussion seems to mix 2 issues into one:
- problems caused by using the wrong config due to none awareness (imho 
the main issue)
- convenience of using multiply configs.

Searching for config files in the exe dir (even if done) doesn't solve 
the first issue, as there may not be any config files in that directory 
to start with.
In this case the unaware user is still screwed.
And even if there are config files there, the unaware user, may just 
have started a 2nd build (with different set of installed packages), by 
copying another lazarus dir, and moved config files into the new dir, 
which have values pointing back to the old dir, causing problems again.

Only checking, if the config files match the current installation can 
solve that.
AFAIK Mattias added a version check.
IMHO for example any error about installed/not found packages at start 
up, could also offer to run the setup dialog again (and point out which 
config is used / warn about a potential conflict)


Only when the user is aware of the need to properly set up several 
config dirs, the convenience of using them comes into play.