[Geany-devel] More Per-Project Configuration Options

[Lex Trotman]

On 10 July 2012 09:57, Braden Walters <meoblast at aol.com> wrote:
> Hi. I noticed a problem that affected me back in 0.2x that thankfully is
> (mostly) solved in 1.22. When I say mostly, I mean it fixes how the problem
> affects me right now, but possibly not for others, and I feel this may also
> affect me again eventually. The problem I noticed is that not all
> configuration options that may change from project-to-project are actually
> settings you can change on a per-project basis. The options that concern me
> the most are those that deal with the format of the saved file (line ending
> characters, new line at end of file (fixed in 1.22), tabs/spaces (not a
> problem), file encoding). I'm interested in the developers' opinions on
> this.
>

The "right" answer to this is that everything should be able to be
configured in a project, but that not everything has to be.  This just
means that project settings override global/user ones.  But it does
make the UI more complex, it needs another preferences dialog for
projects with an extra checkbox per field which indicates if that
value is to be saved in the project file.

This is the way the build system settings work ATM, two dialogs, and
in an effort to reduce confusion the user settings are greyed out if
the setting is set in the project file.  But it ends up needing a very
complex UI and still not all build settings supported by the system
are configurable by UI, no agreement could be reached over how to make
it non-threatening for noobs but still powerful for advanced users.
And ocassionally it provakes screems of confusion, though usually from
those who havn't RTFM and wiki.

All these problems would apply to the whole preferences system if it
worked this way.

Also it would require consideration of how this would interact with
plugin prefs.  How much visibility would plugins need and how much
more complicated would it make plugins handling of their prefs?

On the implementation side, not all of Geany prefs are handled in one
place, so it would probably mean touching quite a lot of the system.

> Someone in IRC also mentioned that if many more options become configurable
> per-project, the global application options might be rendered useless (as
> project settings will override everything). Perhaps this could be solved by
> having a way to reset individual project options (perhaps a list of all
> things that have been changed, and a "Reset to Global" button to reset that
> individual item so it does not appear in that project's file).

Just a "save in project" checkbox, that lets you save/unsave it w/o
changing the value.

>
> I'm curious what the core developers' opinion is on this. If it sounds good,
> I'd definitely be interested in helping make it possible (although I don't
> know the Geany code base, I could learn my way around relevant parts).

The principle is fine, but the build system experience is that the
practice is harder to balance simplicity with power.  Also, whilst the
capabilities are absolutely essential for a few use-cases, most of the
time it will go unused.

Therefore given the effort required and the likely intrusiveness of
the implementation, I don't think it should be implemented at the
moment, unless someone wants to do it in a separate fork and can get
comprehensive testing of that fork without merging it back into Geany.

Cheers
Lex


> _______________________________________________
> Geany-devel mailing list
> Geany-devel at uvena.de
> https://lists.uvena.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geany-devel