[Qgis-user] Preconfiguration of QGIS installations, e.g. WMS Servers

[Alex Mandel]

On 03/09/2011 08:11 AM, Alexander Bruy wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:24:34 +0100
> Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net> wrote:
> 
>>  Interesting question - I don't have an answer but would like to know if 
>>  it is possible.
>>
>>  Here are partial anwers:
>>  * SVG symbols and patterns can be put on a network share but have to be 
>>  configured per user so that QGIS can find them.
>>  * spatial bookmarks, srs, projection and ellipsoid information reside 
>>  in a qgis.db spatialite table in the users .qgis directory - you 
>>  probably have to copy them per user
>>  * .qgis/symbology-ng-style.xml is a per-user definition of new 
>>  symbology style definitions - you'd have to copy this file to each user
>>
>>  I don't know where the WMS and postgis connections are stored.
>>
>>  As more and more medium to large QGIS installations are installed, the 
>>  QGIS devs need to think about central deployment of settings and 
>>  resources, across several platforms.
>>
>>  Anyone else who knows more about the issue?
> 
> WMS and PostGIS conncetions stored in registry on Windows and in config
> file on Linux.
> 
> I think it is possible to create custom installer based on QGIS standalone
> installer, which will create (copy) all necessary files and keys in registry.
> NSIS allow all this things.
> 

I've done this for a PostGIS connection on the OSGeo Live disc. See the
last 15ish lines of
http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo/browser/livedvd/gisvm/trunk/bin/install_qgis.sh
for an example.

You can easily script the placement of such a file into a users QGIS
directory. I'm not sure if a systemwide conf is possible, it's not clear
if QGIS searches in it's own directory first for the conf then the user
(like the python plugins). I'm not sure its stored in the registry at
all these days, since OSGeo4w doesn't use the registry. Also note
OSGeo4w has methods for batch like installs across many machines, and
because it doesn't use the registry, the whole install directory can
just be copied to similar machines as long as the MSVC runtime has been
installed.

Thanks,
Alex