Portable Linux app with TIniPropStorage
lazarus / 7-LCL

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Leledumbo · 2009-02-17 05:38

I've built app with TIniPropStorage to store its configuration. Under
Windows, the .ini file is created in the directory of the application,
so this is good for portable apps. However, under Linux the file is
created in the home directory. How can I make it portable? Let's
assume that the user has write permission since portable apps are
usually put in flash drives (I can simply write a note about that).

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arnoldb · 2009-02-17 08:20

How about:
Code: [Select]var s:string;
begin
{$IFDEF LINUX}
  s:=extractfilepath(application.ExeName);
  s:=s+'myapp.ini';
  IniPropStorage1.IniFileName:=s;
{$ENDIF}
end;

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Leledumbo · 2009-02-18 03:41

According to the wiki, it's equivalent to ParamStr(0) and is the wrong
way on Unix to retrieve application directory. However, since I'm
assuming that it's put in a flash drive and the user run it directly
from there, your solution might work. I'll put a big README in the
archive, thanks.

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arnoldb · 2009-02-18 08:07

True - I didn't check that on the Linux/Unix side.  I had a look at
the link you posted, but unfortunately there seems no other way to
handle it; the other "default" directories on Linux is nowhere close
to doing something like this...

So for now, this would appear to be the best way to handle removable
media, unless somebody else has a more elegant idea.

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Bad Sector · 2009-03-01 00:11

Sure. Use getpid to obtain the current program's PID, then use
readlink to figure the target of /proc/<pid>/exe which is a symbolic
link to your executable. Strip the executable filename and there you
have the path :-). This method is used by many linux programs and its
around for some years now so i believe its quite stable.

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arnoldb · 2009-03-01 15:05

Thanks for that info BadSector    I'll definitely be checking this
out; it might be worthwhile having a standard function in FPC to do
this...

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Bart · 2009-03-01 22:30

Quote from: BadSector on March 01, 2009, 01:11:01 amSure. Use getpid
to obtain the current program's PID, then use readlink to figure the
target of /proc/<pid>/exe which is a symbolic link to your executable.
Strip the executable filename and there you have the path :-). This
method is used by many linux programs and its around for some years
now so i believe its quite stable.But does it also work if I have a
(hard)link to the executable and run the link, especially if the
hardlink is in another directory (since that is what you want to
retrieve)?
Code: [Select]simenon:~$ ln path-to/someprog ./link
simenon:~$ ./link
Bart