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[edit] Resource File Paths

At winter camp, we agreed that we should move to better folder locations for resource files, especially on OSX. For example, moving the contents of the .blender folder that's hidden inside the application bundle to /Users/UserName/Application Data/blender/ where it's easily accessible, and as the platform standards dictate.

We should apply the same logic to the .B.blend file. For such an important file, it's terribly inaccessible and difficult to edit. It's necessary to be able to access this file for various reasons including:

• For testing/debugging, being able to rename your existing config and test by making a clean file, and renaming back after testing
  
• As an artist, packing up your config to take to a new workstation
  
• Switching between configs for different users on the same workstation

This is currently very difficult:

• On Mac OS X, files beginning with . are hidden by the finder, so even if they were to by chance look in the non-standard location where it's kept, most users wouldn't even know it exists.
  
• On Windows, dot files are visible in Explorer, but difficult to manage. It's impossible to rename a file to .something.ext, it requires characters before the first dot.
  
• Even on many linux systems, dot files are hidden by default in the file browser.
  
  

[edit] Proposal

A solution involves three simple points:

1. Move the .B.blend inside the config folder (this is already the case on Windows)
2. Un-hide the individial config files and give them sensible names
3. Keep the config folder in the location dictated by the platform standards

[edit] Details

[edit] Renaming the config files:

• startup.blend      ( .B.blend )
• bookmarks         ( .Bfs )
• file-history           ( .Blog )
• bpython/menus   ( Bpymenus )
• languages         ( .Blanguages )
  

[edit] Config folder paths

Note: At least on Windows, there are proper API calls to get the correct config folder, accounting for localisation settings etc. In Unix, use getenv.

Windows:

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Blender Foundation\ (XP)

C:\Users\Username\Application data\Blender Foundation\ (Vista)

Mac OS X:

/Users/Username/Application Support/Blender/

Linux/Unix:

${HOME}/.blender/

All these will be unified and replaced by EnvironmentVariables.