Introduction: Kdenlive AppImage Local Config File

About: learning, creating, sharing

So if you don't know, an AppImage is a type of file for Linux systems that contains your whole application that can run on its own without having to be installed. The theory is you don't have to worry about any dependencies or distribution discrepancies. You could even put them all on a memory stick and run them from any other Linux system and they should work fine.

AppImage Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppImage

Step 1: Saving Your Settings

You open the AppImage and Kdenlive starts up without a problem but it has the default theme. I like the dark breeze theme so I change it. The next time I open it, the dark breeze is still there.

Is that an issue?

Well no, but an AppImage is supposed to be read only so you can trust that nothing ever changes the file. So how is it remembering your settings? Well in a config file of course but that means it's on your computer and now it's not as portable.

Step 2: The File

Now the reason I'm writing this is mainly because I could find the answer online anywhere. I'm a bit bummed that Kdenlive themselves don't have this type of information on their site.

The location:

~/.config/kdenlive-appimage/kdenlive-appimagerc

(~ means your home directory)

If it's not there and you can't find, try this...

Open Kdenlive and change something in settings like the path to the image editor

Change it to something weird that you know won't be somewhere in the system. Save and close.

Go to the command line, get in to the root directory (cd /) and type:

grep -r goofy_name_of_file

It should puke up the name and location of your config file

Step 3: Not Quite Finished

That's basically all I wanted to document, but I should add that if you want to take this appimage somewhere else, you should remember to take your kdenlive-appimage directory with you.

It would be really nice if all of this could be held in one location.

Step 4: AppImage Special Directories

An AppImage feature that seems to have been implemented in June of 2017 says that if there is a directory in the same location as the AppImage, with the same name, with a .config on the end, it will store the config file there. The same with a .home directory. Unfortunately as of the release of kdenlive-18.08.0-x86_64.AppImage I haven't been able to get this to work.

There also seems to be special commands that allows you to create both these directories automatically.

AppImage Documentation - special directories
https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit#special-di...


Here's a discussion where the feature was created
https://discourse.appimage.org/t/portable-configur...

Step 5: A Daemon for Other Things

This whole process started because I was working on a new video for my YouTube channel [shameless_plug] dotdissonance [/shameless_plug] and Kdenlive broke. Not sure what the deal was, but I decided to see if I could upgrade (or downgrade if that would help). The newest version was only available in an AppImage, so I went and grabbed it.

It actually works fine, but I was curious where I should permanently store it, where was the config file that it generated and would it mess up another Kdenlive install (it won't), and how can I get my Kdenlive project files to be associated with the Kdenlive AppImage as well as having a cute little Kdenlive icon rather than the default XML icon.

I messed around with about every mimetype file and I could find, created .desktop files and none of them actually changed the association (topic for another post...). Yes, you can just right click on the file and say open with a different app and make that the default, but it didn't change the icon and at this point I really just wanted to find the dammed thing. So far still no good, but I did find that there is an appimage daemon that will do all this for you.

Github download page
https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/releases

Dev explanation
https://discourse.appimage.org/t/new-appimaged-opt...