Use of alternate session files or config dirs needed

[Hans.Schmidts]

I have many sessions which are specific for some projects. Such sessions should be stored together with the project, because it makes no sense to flood the main sessions file with more and more project specific settings, and because all colleagues should be able to use such sessions, simply after checkout of the project.

So it must be possible to specify own configuration files or an own configuration directory on start of BC (instead of "%APPDATA%\Scooter Software\Beyond Compare 3\BCSessions.xml" or "%APPDATA%\Scooter Software\Beyond Compare 3").

[Aaron]

Hello,

If you use the Tools menu -> Export, you can select a specific folder with a specific set of session and export it to a BCSessions.xml or BCSettings.bcpkg.

Update: BCSettings.bcpkg is simply a renamed .zip. You can open it as an archive, and pull out the BCSessions.xml.

A user can then use the Tools menu -> Options dialog, General section, and specify that BCSessions.xml file as a Shared Sessions location. This would add those sessions to their own settings as a Shared location in the Saved Sessions list.

[Hans.Schmidts]

OK, thanks, this can help in some cases, but:

1. I would then need an option so pass this shared session file, otherwise all colleagues must configure it by hand - and would see annoying error messages for not existing sessions if they don't have it configured.

2. If it's only one shared file, without option to pass it on command line, then this one would be filled up with more and more project specific settings, and the settings can't still not be stored and archived with the projects, where they belong to.

So I still think that you should add the suggested command line options in some of the next versions - it's not much work, not much danger to break some other functionality, but very valuable for power users.

[Aaron]

Thanks for the suggestion. We can add it to our Customer Wishlist. In the meantime, the other only other workaround I can think of to get this working the current version is to have an install of BC3 (normal or portable) where you overwrite the BCSessions.xml (and any other .xml needed) when loading certain projects. This could be an entire file overwrite, or use an automated solution which parses and edits the .xml.

[Hans.Schmidts]

OK, so I hope for some future version... Meanwhile your other suggestions may help, I will think about giving it a try.