[digiKam-users] How to start a completely new and separate digikam from appimage?

[Remco Viëtor]

On mardi 26 novembre 2019 01:00:27 CET Chris Green wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 25, 2019 at 05:39:14PM -0600, woenx wrote:
> > Alternatively, you can launch digikam from a command line with the
> > --database-directory <dir> parameter, so it uses a clean database in
> > another directory.
> 
> Surely a clean configuration file is a good idea as well.
> 
> 
> It would be good to have this clearly outlined somewhere as it can be
> quite confusing and difficult. 

Of course having everything clearly outlined would be good. But that would 
mean a significant number of extra pages to wade through to find what you 
want, or having a *good* index (which requires a tremendous amount of work to 
create and maintain, just a generated list of terms with page references is 
not enough).

> I.e. where are the following
> confuguration items stored:-
> 
>     Database name - is this saved anywhere?  If it isn't saved
>     anywhere is there a default name and location.  I know it can be
>     changed by a command line parameter.

Database file *names* are (perhaps) not stored in digikamrc, but there is a 
line in mine 
"Database File Path=<xxxxx>", and also a line
"Album Path=<xxxx>".
As DK uses 3 or 4 databases, having standard names is perhaps not such a bad 
idea...

>     Configuration file name and location - I know this defaults to
>     ~/.config/digikamrc which is fairly standard (though it would
>     really be more 'standard' to be ~/.config/digikam/digikamrc).

Those *have* to have a default, or the program cannot start without a correct 
command line parameter, more complicated than necessary for normal use.
The name and location look pretty standard for a KDE program, which Digikam 
is, or at least was originally (and creating a config directory for one or two 
config files seems overkill, IMO).

>     What is stored in the configuration file, it doesn't seem to have
>     anything about the database or album locations.
>     Album directories - I've looked and seen that these are stored in
>     the database but it would be helpful is this was explained
>     somewhere (maybe it is but it should be really 'up front' for me).

See above...

> What determines whether configuration information is stored in the
> configuration file or in the database, is there any rationale for
> where things are stored?