QGIS » QGIS Application

Just a note that starting with a fresh profile, you will never be able to open the help pages as this settings value is never set it seems (thought the url in the options is ok)

This is mainly a issue because those defaults are not created until you open and save the options dialog. I suspect this is the same as QGIS 2 so it's not profile related. The solution to anything that is shipped out of the box as a default should not be done in code and setup in qgis_global_settings.ini which is read only and all profiles will get it unless they override. That should be used for anything we want to ship out of the box

It's that or we have a setup config step which can load all defaults in code when the application first runs. That would be easy enough to do really and can just be part of the load process in main.

@nathan: I think a 'load/save all defaults to the settings in this profile' is a good one.

Though still I am afraid that IF people create a setting in some place, and then use it in another place (like with the help path: set in options, and use in help) we should in one way or another 'force' the default into settings?

Like:

  settings.value( QStringLiteral( "qgis/mysetting" ), false )

I thought of having a qgis_global_settings.ini first too, but the result of this is that the 'default' value is actually defined in two places: code and ini, with all problems of keeping this in sync.

The bigger future plan though should be that QGIS on a fresh install or on a fresh profile should have a well defined default start status. Be it via a master.ini or via a programming step.

I thought of having a qgis_global_settings.ini first too, but the result of this is that the 'default' value is actually defined in two places: code and ini, with all problems of keeping this in sync.

Or skip it in code and have QgsSettings load the global_settings.ini if it's missing from the profile?

@matthias and then make it impossible to set/use a default value in code? So devs are forced to set the default in global_settings.ini?

Not sure if that will fly. Sometimes you need a default value for an optional setting for which there is no need to really save into settings.

But being able to define a default setting both in code AND in ini file will result in a messy state in my opinion.

Global settings are already used this way. They are a fallback if it's not defined in the profile settings. What we really need is a way to generate the default starting global ini file that we have in git. Meaning we update the code, that generates a ini file we check-in into git and that is shipped.

and if a dev doesn't set a default in code and it's not found in settings then there isn't much else we can do. We could ship a list of "no delete defaults" that you can't override but not sure what stuff you would put in that bucket.

Ì don't know if it's related to this issue or if I should file a new report but profile doesn't pick its own language: I'd like to have a profile that is in English (eg quickly file screenshots for docs or issues) and a French one where i could do my daily work or find missing or wrong translation.
Currently, both profiles pick the latest status of the "Override system locale" checkbox and not the one I set when using such profile.

To test:
- remove ~/.share/local/QGIS
- start QGIS
- choose 'I want a clean start. Don't import my QGIS 2 settings.'

Now in Python console type:

QgsSettings().value( "help/helpSearchPath" )
which will return an emtpy list (of search paths)

Open Settings/Options/System properties and see there is:
https://docs.qgis.org/$qgis_short_version/$qgis_locale/docs/user_manual/
in Documentation paths there.

NOW click OK and NOW we have a saved help/helpSearchPath value:

QgsSettings().value( "help/helpSearchPath" )

['https://docs.qgis.org/$qgis_short_version/$qgis_locale/docs/user_manual/']

As Nathan mentioned, global_settings is meant to provide defaults and IMHO it is the way to go, we should move defaults from code to the global_settings and ship it.

The idea is that it is better/easier to keep default values in a single file, that allows for easier customization during packaging and does not force to rebuild the whole binary distribution in order to alter a default setting.

settings.value('whatever') will read the global_settings if nothing is found in the user (profile) settings.

The order in which values are retrieved from value() is the following:

1. the value in the user profile settings
2. the value in the global_settings (note that this has precedence over the next)
3. the default provided inline in the code as an optional argument to value(), like settings.value('whatever', 'default')
4. QVariant() // empty-invalid

The issue with XYZ defaults (that are actually in the global_settings.ini that we ship) is that at the time the global file path to search is generated, QgsApplication.pkgDataPath() is empty because QgsApplication::init() has not been called yet.

This means that the global_settings is not found.

Broken by 00dbc73d430f013d2bcd9bd4b3d5f0d14319f64f

Another additional observation: if you create a new profile, it looks like the global_settings.ini are never read. Because multiple opening of QGIS with the second profile will never show the xyz url...

https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/6303 is adding the help url to the global settings

New approach by Nathan: https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/6317