Zim - A Desktop Wiki


Portable Install


To allow running zim in a "portable" install, you can configure the environment parameters which zim to e.g. looks up resources and Config Files with a special configuration file call environ.ini . This config file must be placed in the same folder where the zim script or zim executable is installed. The file can contain a section [Environment] where each key maps to an environment parameter.


When loading this file, the values are interpreted as file paths relative to the install directory. Also, environment parameters are interpreted as "${NAME}".


Thus a valid file could look like:


[Environment]
HOME=../portable_home
XDG_CONFIG_HOME=../config
PATH=../bin:${PATH}
LANG=NL_nl

This example overwrites the location for the home folder and for the default configuration folder. It also modifies the PATH to first look in a local folder before going to the default locations. And it changes the language in which zim will run.


Note that on windows paths need to be separated with a ";" instead of a ":".


This config file is parsed using the standard python library "configparser", not by the zim configuration library.