Writing the cfg

An import always produces a whole cfg. Where it goes is up to you, and nothing is written until you say where.

--in-place needs --cfg, and cannot be combined with --output.

Updating a cfg keeps it as you wrote it#

With --cfg, and the output in the same folder as that cfg (a preview, --in-place, or --output beside it), dream-ini rewrites the file from its own lines. The keys the import changes get their new values. Everything else stays as you wrote it: comments, config= and replace= lines, settings dream-ini knows nothing about, and paths spelled relative or with OpenMW’s tokens, such as ?userdata?.

Only that one file is written. When it includes others with config=, their data= folders are searched for content and archives, but their settings are not copied into it.

Saving to another folder writes full paths#

A relative path in a cfg is relative to the folder the cfg is in. Save the result of --cfg into a different folder and those paths would point somewhere else, so dream-ini writes a flattened cfg instead: every setting from the whole config= chain, with every path in full, and no config= or replace= lines, since the chain is already applied. Comments are not kept.

dream-ini --ini Morrowind.ini --cfg ~/.config/openmw/openmw.cfg --output backup/openmw.cfg

Without –cfg, a new cfg#

With no --cfg, the import starts from an empty cfg and writes only what it imported. On standard output, it ends with a comment naming the serializer’s version:

content=Morrowind.esm
data=/games/Morrowind/Data Files
encoding=win1252
fallback=Weather_Sunrise_Time,6
fallback-archive=Morrowind.bsa
no-sound=0
# OpenMW-Config Serializer Version: 2.0.0

A --cfg that does not exist is the same: dream-ini prints cfg file does not exist and starts empty. The file is created only if it is also where the result goes.

Relative –data folders#

A relative --data is relative to the folder the cfg lives in, so the data= line means the same folder to OpenMW:

The GUI’s Data Files directory follows the same rules.

Messages stay out of the cfg#

In a preview, standard output holds the cfg and nothing else; everything else goes to standard error, so redirecting the output to a file is safe. When writing a file, the progress messages (load ini file, the found files, write to) go to standard output, and warnings still go to standard error.

Writes are all or nothing#

The new cfg is written to a temporary file beside the target, named .openmw.cfg.dream-ini-<process>-<n>.tmp, flushed to disk, and renamed over the old one. A crash leaves either the old cfg or the new one, never half of either. The file’s permission bits are kept; its owner, ACLs and timestamps are not, because the result is a new file. If the cfg is a symbolic link, the file it points to is replaced and the link stays.

An import that fails, a missing archive for instance, writes nothing at all.