How do I specify where the simmate DB is written to?

[Andrew-S-Rosen]

When I run simmate databse reset, it defaults to writing out to ~/simmate. Is there a mechanism to specify a different location for the database? I couldn't find it with simmate database --help.

[jacksund]

You can add this to your ~/simmate/settings.yaml file:

database:
  engine: django.db.backends.sqlite3
  name: '/path/to/my/example.sqlite3'

Until v0.18.0 is released, this will only work with a dev install because of a bug that I just patched #746. You were the first to try this with sqlite 🙃

Also, since you've hit the point of messing with your sqlite database, it might be worth switching to using postgres. You can host the postgres db wherever, as long as your python instance has internet access. For example, this is what it looks like when you connect to a postgres instance hosted on digitalocean:

database:
  engine: django.db.backends.postgresql
  host: db-postgresql-nyc3-49797-do-user-8843535-0.b.db.ondigitalocean.com
  name: defaultdb
  user: doadmin
  password: asd87a9sd867fasd
  port: 25060
  options:
    sslmode: require

The downsides to postgres are that it takes a bit to learn, and there's no "prebuilt" database for it. Meanwhile, sqlite is nice and easy to setup, but doesn't scale well.

[Andrew-S-Rosen]

Thank you, @jacksund!! This is very helpful. Our home directories have very little storage space, so this will make life a bit easier. Indeed, longer term a switch to postgres is in the cards.