Environment variable RT_SETTINGS [Solved]

Software RawTherapee
1

I hope this is the right place to post this…
According to the documentation, if I create an environment variable by the name of RT_SETTINGS that points to a defined folder, then RawTherapee should use that folder to store a number of files and folders relative to the options, profiles, etc.

Interestingly, in my installation, this doesn’t work. Although the environment variable is correctly set, RawTherapee keeps on using the default location for these files. Tried a reboot of the computer, to no avail…
Using RawTherapee 5.6 on Windows 8.1
Any idea what I may be doing wrong? Or could there be some bug in that version of RawTherapee?

2

How are you setting the variable on windows?

3

Open a terminal, use the SET command as follows:
set RT_SETTINGS=D:\Docs-Fichiers\Fichiers\Config\RawTherapee
Then open RawTherapee to check, but it still uses the default location for the options file and other related folders - I can verify this by modifying an item in the Preferences and look at if the options file has been modified.

4

Did you open it from the terminal also?

5

No, I use the link that was generated upon installation to open the program.
And you are right, if I open RT from the same terminal, it works fine. I don’t understand how that is. My understanding is that environment variables should be global, so if set from a terminal should still be available everywhere?
Is there a command to make the SET command global?

6

OK. We can consider this as solved. The solution consists in creating a small .BAT file that contains the SET command followed by the command to open RawTherapee. Then executing this .BAT file works as desired.
Thanks to paperdigits for guiding me on the right track.

7

You used to be able to set env variables somewhere in the control panel, which would set them globally. Not sure about newer version of windows. I’m sure some search will reveal an answer.

8

I dusted off my Win 10 system (for the OP, I think the same procedure will work on Win 8). You can get to the global environment variables like this (there are other ways as well):

  • In Windows Explorer, right click “This PC”
  • select Properties
  • click “Change Settings”
  • select the Advanced tab
  • click the Environment Variables button.
9

Thanks for the tips. And yes it’s there on Win8 also. I guess I am too old and still have reflexes dating back to the DOS era… Like writing batch files that include SET commands. But it still works fine! Just that I should not forget Windows is multitasking, and what is set in an instance will not nessarily be there in another instance.
Anyway, all is fine now, I did the equivalent operation on my Linux machine, so now both can share the same settings and profiles and if I change something on one computer it gets automatically updated for the other. Great!

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