How to use a configuration stored in some custom directory as a default configuration?

[svenkat683]

I am trying to use same configuration over two different user accounts on my Macbook.
For this, I have moved the configuration file to /Users/Shared folder. I can use alternative config by using jrnl --config-file [configuration file path].

But I want to use this new configuration file as a default so that when type jnrl on my terminal, it will directly consider my new configuration file path.

[micahellison]

Hi @svenkat683, I think the best approach is to use an alias that adds your --config-file arguments to a jrnl call. For instance, in bash, this would allow you to use that config file with a new "myjrnl" command:

alias myjrnl='jrnl --config-file /Users/Shared/jrnl.yaml'

To set that alias for all users, see this Stackoverflow thread. Or just run that alias command for each user.

There is another approach that would involve changing your XDG configuration folder by modifying the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable as specified in the XDG spec, but it would affect other applications that follow this spec, so I think the alias is a more solid approach.

[svenkat683]

Hi @micahellison, I am following this alias approach already. Thank you.
But is there any way or plan for setting up this using jnrl?

[micahellison]

Hi @svenkat683, no, the only way I can think of to add additional support for this in jrnl directly would be adding an extra environment variable for identifying the config, which I don't think is a good design decision in the long term.

However, I was talking @wren about this and he suggested using symlinks - keep a jrnl folder in your shared directory with jrnl.yaml in it, then in each user's default config folder, create a jrnl symlink to the jrnl folder in the shared directory.