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Incorrect documentation about where user config data is stored

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Incorrect documentation about where user config data is stored BWK 06 Jul 02:05
  Incorrect documentation about where user config data is stored rich404 06 Jul 07:26
BWK
2020-07-06 02:05:10 UTC (almost 4 years ago)
postings
24

Incorrect documentation about where user config data is stored

The Gimp website documents the user config data (GIMP Profile) here: https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/GIMPProfile/

There is listed a method of using the Preferences dialog to find the folders into which system and user preference data is supposedly stored. This information does not correspond with my experience in using Gimp 2.10.x flatpak editions.

For a Linux system this method yields two folder paths: * System wide non writeable path - /app/share/gimp/2.0 * User specific writeable path - /home/x/.var/app/org.gimp.GIMP/config/GIMP/2.10

However the supposed user specific path I have found is apparently not actively maintained in the current release of Gimp 2.10, or only for some user data.

Instead by searching my system I discovered a second user specific path /home/x/.config/GIMP and this appears to be where at least some user settings are actually being stored in current flatpak editions of Gimp. This includes the all important keyboard shortcuts and window layout information that I want to be easily able to copy between my computers.

This is apparently undocumented as far as the above web page on the official Gimp website is concerned but this page has not been updated since Gimp 2.8 in any case.

Since the Flatpak specific config path appears in the Preferences dialog of Gimp 2.10.20, it appears that for some reason the Gimp designers have decided that Gimp has to support three profile paths instead of two.

The path starting with ~/.var/ by my understanding is intended to be the flatpak specific user profile data path according to Flatpak specifications since other Flatpak apps I am familiar with also document this path and in their case tell people to copy data from an old ~/.config path to the new ~/.var path to be picked up by the Flatpak edition of their app.

I can only speculate that Gimp will check to see if a .config profile already exists in a system either from a previous edition of Gimp or from the installation of a distro which includes a version of Gimp in its default user profile and will use that path instead of the .var path but this does not correspond to the user profile information that is being shown in the Preferences dialog and is therefore, very difficult to understand. The use of differing config paths is obviously an issue with apps that can be packaged both as flatpak and non flatpak but in this case the folder paths in preferences appear to not be able to reflect the use of ~/.config for user data storage as it appears to be used.

rich404
2020-07-06 07:26:41 UTC (almost 4 years ago)

Incorrect documentation about where user config data is stored

The Gimp website documents the user config data (GIMP Profile) here: https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/GIMPProfile/

....snip....

I can only speculate that Gimp will check to see if a .config profile already exists in a system either from a previous edition of Gimp or from the installation of a distro which includes a version of Gimp in its default user profile and will use that path instead of the .var path but this does not correspond to the user profile information that is being shown in the Preferences dialog and is therefore, very difficult to understand. The use of differing config paths is obviously an issue with apps that can be packaged both as flatpak and non flatpak but in this case the folder paths in preferences appear to not be able to reflect the use of ~/.config for user data storage as it appears to be used.

sort of correct

this from a developer

Jehan Jehan @Jehan · 3 days ago
Developer
Yeah this was a decision I made when I originally made our flatpak. The flatpak developers even made the option specially for us of being able to use the $XDG_CONFIG folder instead of their custom ~/.var folder. The idea is that a lot of people have a lot of data in GIMP (configuration, brushes, dynamics, plug-ins, scripts, patterns, and so on) and I feared they dislike loosing them all (and searching the web to find them back in some hidden folder to be moved on another hidden folder, etc.). Actually it worked quite well, since we have had extremely few complaints (or even none) regarding data loss.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/5331

To be honest I find both paths ~/.config/GIMP/2.10 and ~/.var/app/org.gimp.GIMP/config/GIMP/2.10/ too long-winded

I put very few resources in there (although I do use it for a resource manager), otherwise I create my own easy to find Folder / Sub-Folders for resources in 'home' and add that to the Gimp folders paths. All a matter of personal preference.