kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Moses McKnight <moses@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 09/02/2014 06:59 PM, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
> On 8/31/2014 4:31 AM, Lorenzo Marcantonio wrote:
<snip>
> > By the way, I always wondered... why using env vars instead of settings
> > in a config file? IIRC there were really angry people at the prospect of
> > having to set environment variables (which is, by the way, the usual way
> > of doing that on posix systems...)
> >
> > Especially since Debian policy explicitly forbids to have applications
> > relying on them; I don't agree with that and they even patch in defaults
> > which is a Bad Thing(tm) for me:P
>
> I need to take a look at this.  An order of precedence has already been
> established: environment variable, user configuration, default.  It just
> needs to be coded.  I am not willing to give up being able to trump
> everything with an environment variable for development purposes.

This was actually the next thing on my list of things I was planning on looking 
into.  In fact I had these two links ready to put in my argument for putting the 
path variables into config files:
http://peterlyons.com/problog/2010/02/environment-variables-considered-harmful
http://www.insectnation.org/howto/environment-variables-considered-harmful

The order of precedence you mention is exactly what I had in mind.  My thought 
also was to add to the GUI the ability to define path variables, and save them 
in "kicad_common" config file.  If you would like me to continue to look into 
this let me know, or let me know if you would just rather do it yourself.

Thanks,
Moses