Re: [Flightgear-devel] Use of QSettings by the Qt launcher for --terrasync-dir

[James T. <zak...@ma...>]

> On 5 Apr 2016, at 16:10, Florent Rougon <f.r...@fr...> wrote:
> 
> 
> I'm afraid it is not FG_HOME... FG_HOME is not something that can be
> freely chosen. It is simply a way of referring to a directory that
> depends not only on the OS and user name, but also IIRC on the OS
> version (in the case of Windows).

Correct, although as you noted in your next email, it can be changed via an env-var. I strongly suggest not doing that, unless you Really Know What You Are Doing (TM)

> 
>> i assumed by the label of the button that it would allow access to the
>> base FG-* directory path settings... i didn't realize that fg-home was
>> defined at the very top of the "configure addon aircraft and scenery"
>> button...
> 
> This not FG_HOME, this is the "download directory". This corresponds to
> the --download-dir fgfs command line option. cf. 'fgfs --help --verbose'
> with a recent enough FG 2016.2.0.

Right. The reason we added this is the presumption that with aircraft catalogs, we need a location outside TerraSync, but user-writeable, to store potentially several gigabytes of aircraft data (if you go crazy downloading many aircraft). So it makes sense to have a single ‘pick the location FG can happily fill up with stuff’, and to decouple this from FG_HOME, which is usually hidden.

(Again, to repeat the old discussion at the time, Steam on Windows puts its downloads into a hidden location by default and no one seems to mind, but the reason we adjust the default download dir on Windows to ~/Documents/FlightGear is so it’s a visible location)

> 
>> as the second button one is labeled "change data files location" i
>> thought that would be the place to perform this desired task...
> 
> That must be FG_ROOT. Maybe it would be useful, in order to reduce
> confusion, to add this in parentheses in the built-in Qt launcher...

Yes, that’s fair. I was trying to avoid using technical terminology in the launcher, but I agree that omitting this wording is making things moe confusing, not simpler.

Kind regards,
James