QGIS » QGIS Application

Filip Mahieu wrote:

There was a closed issue that would have fixed it, that I did find yesterday but not anymore today...

Is #10858 the issue you mean?

I think it is necessary to let the user decide whether the paths in the qlr-file should be absolute or relative.

• If the user intends to move the qlr-file along with the data source(s), paths need to be relative.
• If the qlr-file references a common resource, e.g. a network drive, paths should be absolute.

Maybe that's a good idea Sebastian, but now sometimes it's relative and sometimes absolute, and there seems no control about it (I can't find it obvious..).

It's indeed #10858 I didn't find, but I read it again and it's a bit a different content there though..

I'm running Essen, and if I create the layer definition file with path set to relative, it can't find the datasource if I load the qlr into a project with existing layers, even though nothing about the folder structure has changed or been moved. The qlr file works fine when dropped into an empty project. One fix was to edit the qlr file with the absolute path. Another of course would be to re-create the layer file with project path set to absolute.
The bottom line is that relative should work if nothing has changed in the file structure - Correct?

The behaviour regarding relative/absolute path definitions in qlr files follows the project options "General settings" -> "Save path" which can be set to "absolute" or "relative". The created qlr file will use the same setting as the project at creation time.
Works for 2.16. Haven't checked for earlier version af Qgis