Environments variables in Shotwell?

Applications
1

Does Shotwell use any environmental variables, e.g. for the option "--datadir=DIRECTORY" or the directory for the log? I can’t seem to find any in the docs…

2

You can use environment variables in --datadir=DIRECTORY but only when you’re invoking shotwell from a shell. E.g., from a terminal you can run shotwell --datadir=$HOME or similar. But if you put that command in a desktop launcher it won’t work. You’d have to use a command like bash -c 'shotwell --datadir=$HOME' in a desktop launcher to make it work the same.

3

You are right, this is mostly missing from the documentation. There might be the occasional mention in the Wiki. Also note: I would generally advise against the use of --datadir, it comes from a time in the past where everything was in that folder which is no longer the case, so your mileage may vary.

Logging

  • SHOTWELL_LOG=1 enables the debug logging
  • SHOTWELL_LOG_FILE=... sets the log file, where :console: will dump the log on the screen instead.
  • SHOTWELL_SOUP_LOG=1 will log the HTTP requests sent and received by the publishing plugins

Paths

In general, shotwell should respect all of the relevant XDG_... variables (see XDG Base Directory Specification)

4

Thank you for your answers!

I was hoping for a more specific way to direct Shotwell then using $XDG variables, something like

$SHW_DATA_HOME - SQlite3-database file
$SHW_CONFIG_HOME - Settings and such stuff
$SHW_CACHE_HOME - Thumbnail files

that can override $XDG_DATA_HOME et al. if set.

I guess I can put it on some wish-list or better see if I can contribute myself :smile:

5

What are you actually trying to achieve?

6

From time to time I upgrade my OS disk and/or move to newer releases. Although Shotwell has been stable in file placement I have chosen a solution where all my photos (actually used as ‘in place’) and tagging (stored in ‘photos.db’) are on a separate disk/filesystem. This filesystem is backed up to other disks and to the cloud. So I would like to direct Shotwell to store all its info on this filesystem/dir and not in subdirectories to my $HOME directory (which might be replaced/gone).

7

Ok, in this case setting the datadir is the correct way to do it. But you settings will only live in gsettings (backed by dconf) which will be in your home folder.

8

It’s OK that settings live in “gsettings”. It’s the thumbnails, paths, tags, events and filters I want to backup. What I was hoping (in the original question) was that there might be an alternative way to do it as opposed to using --datadir, e g using an environment variable set in “.bashrc”.

9

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