Settings Directory
The first time you run Wing, it will create your Settings Directory automatically. This directory is used to store your license, preferences, default project, history, and other files used internally by Wing. It also contains any user-defined snippets, scripts, display theme color palettes, syntax colors, file sets, and shared perspectives.
Wing cannot run without this directory. If it cannot be created, Wing will exit.
The settings directory is created in a location appropriate to your operating system. That location is listed as your Settings Directory in the About Box accessible from the Help menu.
On Windows the settings directory is called Wing Pro 10 and is placed within the per-user application data directory. For Windows running on c: with an English localization the location is:
c:\Users\${username}\AppData\Roaming\Wing Pro 10
In Wing Personal the settings directory is instead named Wing Personal 10 and in Wing 101 it is called Wing 101 10.
On Linux and macOS the settings directory is a sub-directory of your home directory:
~/.wingpro10
In Wing Personal this directory is instead called .wing-personal6 and in Wing 101 it is called .wing-101-6.
Cache Directory
Wing also creates a Cache Directory that contains the source analysis caches, auto-save directory, and a few other things. This directory is also listed in Wing's About box, accessed from the Help menu.
On Windows, the cache directory is located in the AppData\Local area. On Linux, it is ~/.cache/wingpro10 and on macOS, it can be found with the symbolic link ~/.wingpro10/cache-dir-symlink.
In Wing Personal, this directory is instead called wingpersonal6 and in Wing 101 it is called wing101-6.
Overriding Settings and Cache Directories
The default location of the settings directory can be changed by passing --settings=fullpath on the command line, where fullpath is the full path of the directory to use. If the directory does not exist it will be created only if its parent directory exists. Otherwise, Wing falls back to using the default location for the settings directory.
Similarly, the default location of the cache directory can be changed with --cache=fullpath.
Shared Settings Directory
Another way to override the default settings directory is to create a directory named user-settings inside of the Wing installation directory. When this is present, Wing will use it instead of the default location.
Creating this directory allows settings to move with Wing if your installation is on a portable drive, or to be shared among multiple users that log into the same machine. Permissions on the directory need to allow read and write for all users that will be using Wing.
This is not recommended if multiple users log into the same machine concurrently because settings changed by one user will be overwritten by another user without any notice, and the default project file will be locked if opened by multiple users.
