[Chimera-users] Global and per-user preference files?

[Greg Couch]

Hi Mike,

Chimera currently only supports one preferences file, so the simplest 
would be to copy a default preferences file to the user's preferences 
location.  You could either do it when you setup the accounts, or modify 
the Chimera startup code in CHIMERA/share/__main__.py or 
CHIMERA/share/chimeraInit.py to do it if there isn't one already.  
Analogously, you could disable the code that checks for updates in 
CHIMERA/share/chimeraInit.py, ie., comment out the call to 
tkgui.periodicCheckForNewerChimera.

     HTH,

     Greg

On 10/03/2012 09:52 AM, mike _ wrote:
> I wish to deploy a Chimera installation across multiple machines for
> multiple users. For obvious reasons the users will not have write
> permission on the application directory. In this scenario Chimera's
> default behaviour of regularly checking for updates is unhelpful so I
> wish to disable it.
>
> Having read http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/preferences.html#Preferences
> I assumed I could disable the update checking by putting a suitable
> preferences file in the application directory and then having users
> invoke Chimera in such a way that preferences file is found. That
> works, but generates a warning that the preferences file is read-only
> (which it is, it's in the application directory) and Chimera seems to
> only want to use the one preferences file. So the result is that users
> can't save any preferences.
>
> Is there any way to make Chimera read a global preferences file that
> contains some useful defaults and also allow each user to have their
> own preferences file?
>
>
> thanks,
>
> mike