[Lazarus] Automatic handling of multiple Lazarus installation - user configuration folder (Was: Re: Search paths per platform)

[Martin]

On 14/09/2011 04:31, Flávio Etrusco wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 12:10 AM, Hans-Peter Diettrich
> <DrDiettrich1 at aol.com>  wrote:
>> Sven Barth schrieb:
>>> 2. Delphi uses the Windows Registry to store its known packages, true, but
>>> Lazarus basically does the same for its installed packages in its XML files
>>> that are stored in e.g. %APPDATA%\lazarus or ~/.lazarus.
>> The difference becomes obvious with multiple Lazarus installations. Where
>> multiple Delphi versions share packages (causing trouble), every Lazarus
>> installation must be configured explicitly.
> I believe this has been discussed recently, but can't find it right now.
> I'm willing to write patch, which of these features would be desirable/accepted?
> 1) Create user the configuration to include Lazarus version (just
> major&minor) in the folder name? (at least NetBeans does this, I find
> it nice :) )
Storing config in the app dir IMHO is not a good idea (btw older Lazarus 
did do that.)
Most modern OS have guidelines t say otherwise.

On linux users can not write to that dir at all. On Windows it would 
currently work, because lazarus is nt in "Program Files" folder => once 
it will be, windows will apply "workarounds" by moving the files to 
"Program Data" or similar (newer windows only).

Backup solutions may not find the data in the prg folder, multi user 
systems will not work...


------
Improving the installer to detct the 2nd install, and allow choosing a 
diff folder (including subfolder of current), and to create the correct 
shortcuts may help. (for snapshot users)

Users with svn install would still have the warning.



> 2) Store what's the "default" Lazarus installation path in a setting
> for that configuration and warn in case it's running the "wrong" one;
IMHO +1

Note that the lazarus.exe changes location on linux. If you recompile it 
will be in the users home, as the install folder is not writable

> 3) In the "warning" above, the allow user to chose to create a new
> configuration, automatically create (and later search) based on
> project folder name (if different), parent folder name and/or
> arch/targetos.
>
>