Feature Request: Secondary location for JSON machine definitions

[MarcusWolschon]

Currently all machine definitions are JSON files in Cura 2.1.x itself.
(On MacOS this makes them part of the .app package)

Feature Request:

1. Cura should also scan an external directory for additional json files containing machine definitions.
2. Documentation should be updated accordingly (https://ultimaker.com/en/resources/20511-change-machine-settings)

I propose locations:

• Linux below ~/.cura/
• MacOS below ~/Library/Application Support/cura
• Windows: below the Applications/Ultimaker/cura directory in the users home directory.

[awhiemstra]

Cura already supports loading from the local user storage directories:

On linux, you can put them into ~/.local/share/cura/machines for 2.1 or ~/.local/share/cura/definitions for 2.2
On OS X, you can put them into ~/.cura/machines for 2.1 or ~/Library/Application Support/cura/definitions
On Windows, you can put them into ~/AppData/Local/cura/machines for 2.1 or ~/AppData/Local/cura/definitions for 2.2

[nallath]

But this isn't well documented or clear. We should perhaps always create the folders, even though nothing is found. That would make it a bit more clear.

[MarcusWolschon]

I think ~/.cura/machines already exists and contains the .cfg files.
I'll try putting .json machine definitions there too. Thanks!

Please mention these 3 locations in
https://ultimaker.com/en/resources/20511-change-machine-settings
too

[MarcusWolschon]

https://ultimaker.com/en/community/20538-cura-21-open-beta-has-been-released?page=10&sort=#reply-150501

those seeds to be a bug when stories json files there.
open a separate rocket for this?

[MarcusWolschon]

s/rocket /ticket
damn keyboard an no edit button in phone view.

[thopiekar]

@nallath For users like @MarcusWolschon it would be more useful to log this instead of doing mess I think.
Something like:
<> Looking for user definitions..
<> Couldn't find directory ~/.local/share/cura/definitions

Or for the case an user just wants to override definitions.
<> Looking for user definitions..
<> Using for the current printer local definiton ~/.local/share/cura/definitions/XY instead!

[nallath]

Yeah, good point.

[probonopd]

@awhiemstra

On linux, you can put them into ~/.local/share/cura/machines for 2.1 or ~/.local/share/cura/definitions for 2.2

Is this still true for Cura-2.4.0-BETA.AppImage?

sudo strace -f ./Cura-2.4.0-BETA.AppImage 2>&1 | grep definitions | grep "/home/" | cut -d '"' -f 2

shows no signs of trying to load definitions from ~/.local/share/cura/definitions. It is accessing ~/.cache/cura/definitions/2.4.0-BETA/ though, but the files there are not json files.

[nallath]

We create "pickled" files of the definitions. It should try and read all the json files and then create caches, but it seems that isn't working correctly.

[arthurlutz]

+1 for this on the documentation side. Is this still valid for cura 2.4 ?

Can we add materials, meshes and quality profiles in the same manner ?

[awhiemstra]

Figured out what was going wrong. We never tried to read from the definitions or other directories since they are not considered "writable" and thus were never added to the list of locations to consider when loading. That is now fixed.