Configuration of user data location

Submitted by Merlin on Sun, 2010-09-12 02:10

Well, I've been using VCC for over one year now. It's the only software that I've been able to trust will work every time at the game table. The last time I took it to the next level and started using all the effect tracking (I normally do this with Alea tools markers). It seemed to work really well.

Lately I've been moving completely over to Mac for everything, and I am curious if there is a way for me to configure my user data to be located in a directory of my choice within my docs directory? Right now I can only seem to get my user data to show up in my home directory along with a file called vcc.properties. I've tried editing that file (it looks obvious how to move the vcc directory), but it doesn't work. I'd really like to have all my user configuration information reside within a single directory of my choice.

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Submitted by Nebulorum on Mon, 2010-09-13 00:04.

Thanks for the support and trust in the tool.

Moving the data files and directory is really easy. All you have to do is copy the information and edit the vcc.properties. For example:

<entry key="vcc.dnd4e.basedir">/User/me/Documents/vcc</entry>
<entry key="vcc.dnd4e.compendium">vcc-store:directory:file:$BASE/compendium</entry>

However VCC will look for the vcc.properties in a small set list of directories. These directory are extracted form Java variables, are are searched in this order:

  1. vcc.home: this one is set by the user (normally for testing)
  2. user.dir: this is the current directory that java is running in (I'm not sure what it maps when you click on the icon, will have to investigate).
  3. user.home: this is your home directory.

So if you can live with the vcc.properties on you home directory, just change the base directory in the file.

However if you really want to get rid of this file you have to change the way VCC launches.

The immediate way to change the location of the vcc.properties is to go into the Application Bundle directory and edit the Info.plist. What you want to do is add the vcc.home variable to the file (you can use vcc.install as a model). As soon as I get my hands on a Mac, I'll explain exactly how to do this in detail.

Alternatively we could open a feature request. We would have to figure out the best way to change this search. In general we try to avoid specific behavior for each platform, but it may make sense.