system specific location of qgis settings

[borysiasty]

The qgis QSettings are stored in the system location, while the sqlite & plugin directory is always ~/.qgis. Shouldn't we consider the use of a system-specific location? For example '~\Application Data\qgis' in Windows XP

[jef]

patch

[borysiasty]

I believe it's a bad idea to move the database and plugin directory between 1.0.0 and 1.0.1. It will leave the abandoned directory and lost a part of settings. Users will be just confused and annoyed after upgrading to 1.0.1... So I'd rather prefer to force this change right now and save the future consistency.

[mhugent]

I think it is even worse to move it so short before release. We don't have time to react if there is any unexpected problem. In my opinion, changes like this should be done before feature freeze.

[borysiasty]

so better let's wait for the 2.0

[kyngchaos]

What about doing this for one of the 1.x releases, maybe 1.6?

Also, add a case for OS X:

#elif defined Q_WS_MAC
    return QDir::homePath() + QString( "/Library/Application Support/QGIS/" );

I'm not sure if there is a variable for that path fragment or full path like for Windows, but as far as I know it's hardwired in the system as a standard folder as is never localized.

Note also that there is now a runtime switch to set the settings dir, r13951, so this patch will have to be changed a bit to fit in with that.

[kyngchaos]

Can we get this moving for 1.7?