Make GUI and CLI tools use the same datadir

ryanofsky commented at 4:21 pm on April 3, 2023: contributor

This is based on #27302. The non-base commits are:

Currently if your choose a non-default datadir in the GUI intro screen, the datadir is ignored by CLI tools.

This PR makes GUI and CLI tools the same datadir setting by default. It is followup to https://github.com/bitcoin-core/gui/pull/602 which made GUI and CLI tools use the same settings as long as they loaded the same datadir.

The reason GUI and CLI tools use inconsistent datadirs is that GUI stores the datadir path in a strDataDir field in .config/Bitcoin/Bitcoin-Qt.conf¹ which CLI tools ignore. This PR changes the GUI to instead store the datadir path at the default datadir location ~/.bitcoin² as a symlink that CLI tools will already follow, or as a text file if the filesystem does not support symlinks.

If upgrading from a previous version of the GUI and there is only a GUI datadir, the strDataDir setting will be automatically migrated to a symlink so CLI tools will start using it as well.

If upgrading and GUI and CLI tools are using different datadirs, the GUI will show a prompt allowing either of the datadirs to be loaded on startup, with an option to set one as the default going forward.

strDataDir value is stored in .config/Bitcoin/Bitcoin-Qt.conf on linux, in property list files on macos, and in registry keys on windows. ↩︎
The default datadir location is ~/.bitcoin on linux, ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin on macos, and %APPDATA%\Bitcoin on windows ↩︎

DrahtBot commented at 4:21 pm on April 3, 2023: contributor

The following sections might be updated with supplementary metadata relevant to reviewers and maintainers.

Code Coverage & Benchmarks

For details see: https://corecheck.dev/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls/27409.

Reviews

See the guideline for information on the review process. A summary of reviews will appear here.

Conflicts

Reviewers, this pull request conflicts with the following ones:

#bitcoin-core/gui/870 ([DRAFT] Expose AssumeUTXO Load Snapshot Functionality To The GUI by D33r-Gee)
#33550 (Fix windows libc++ fs::path fstream compile errors by ryanofsky)
#31260 (scripted-diff: Type-safe settings retrieval by ryanofsky)

If you consider this pull request important, please also help to review the conflicting pull requests. Ideally, start with the one that should be merged first.

LLM Linter (✨ experimental)

Possible typos and grammar issues:

inccludeconf -> includeconf [spelling error in comment makes the identifier unclear]
fo -> of [typo in comment: “Newer version fo the GUI” should be “Newer versions of the GUI”]
datadirectory -> data directory [missing space in “datadirectory” in error/status message makes phrase harder to read]
that -> than [comparison error in comment: “different datadir path that the default…” should be “different datadir path than the default…”]

No other added lines contain typographic or grammatical errors that make the English incomprehensible.

drahtbot_id_5_m

ryanofsky commented at 4:22 pm on April 3, 2023: contributor

This is a draft PR and not fully implemented. Just opening it to share progress since it’s taking longer than I expected to implement correctly

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on Apr 3, 2023

ryanofsky force-pushed on Apr 12, 2023

DrahtBot removed the label Needs rebase on Apr 12, 2023

pinheadmz commented at 11:21 am on April 15, 2023: member

This PR probably closes https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/8106

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on Apr 21, 2023

luke-jr commented at 10:21 pm on June 22, 2023: member

Won’t this change/break putting the bitcoin.conf in the GUI-selected datadir?

ryanofsky commented at 10:36 pm on June 22, 2023: contributor

Won’t this change/break putting the bitcoin.conf in the GUI-selected datadir?

No, I definitely need to update this and it may contain bugs. But do you see something here that would cause that to happen?

luke-jr commented at 11:02 pm on June 22, 2023: member

No, I didn’t get to the code yet - was just commenting from the description of this PR and #27302

in test/functional/feature_config_args.py:187 in 8d777c0670 outdated

112@@ -108,6 +113,41 @@ def test_config_file_parser(self):
113         with open(inc_conf_file2_path, 'w', encoding='utf-8') as conf:
114             conf.write('')  # clear
115 
116+    def test_config_file_log(self):
117+        # Disable this test for windows currently because trying to override
118+        # the default datadir through the environment does not seem to work.
119+        if sys.platform == "win32":
120+            return

pinheadmz commented at 12:17 pm on October 3, 2023:

Confirmed, doesn’t work :-( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/shell/csidl#remarks

maflcko assigned ryanofsky on Jan 2, 2024

maflcko commented at 9:16 am on June 28, 2024: member

@ryanofsky What is the status of this?

ryanofsky commented at 2:34 pm on June 28, 2024: contributor

re: #27409 (comment)

@ryanofsky What is the status of this?

It’s a change I’d really like to get back to, but is not ready now. The last time I worked on it, which was months ago, I started writing a Qt test for it but there are so many permutations of configurations (presence/absense of different data directory locations) that I was struggling to write it. I would like to get back to this at some point and I do have work in progress, but I don’t think I will have an update on it soon, given other things I’m working on.

Rebased 5855150efae74d10e0eaf3bd08b06e8655a0f1ba -> 58645699229fcb2ebb7ff51b58239fa73937f91c (pr/1data.2 -> pr/1data.3, compare)

bitcoin-wallet: make bitcoin-wallet tool load config file

Currently bitcoin-wallet accepts a -datadir argument but ignores and config
file in that directory. This changes it to load the config file for consistency
with other cli tools, and in case it contains any significant settings.

Also update various tests using the data directory to call ReadConfigFiles.

Motivation for these changes is to prevent errors after the next commit makes
it at assert error to get the datadir path without reading the configuration
first.

0545d0d890

init: Allow bitcoin default datadir to point at an external datadir

It's always been possible for bitcoin default datadirs ($HOME/.bitcoin,
$HOME/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin, %APPDATA%\Bitcoin) to point at an
external locations using symlinks, but not all filesystems support symlinks, so
add extra support for pointing at external locations using text file.

This feature is used in the following commit to allow the bitcoin GUI to select
a default datadir location that will also be treated as the default datadir for
CLI tools. Currently when a custom data is set in the GUI, CLI tools ignore it
by default.

636cc9aff5

Make GUI and CLI tools use the same datadir

Currently if a you choose a non-default datadir in the GUI intro screen, the
datadir is ignored by CLI tools. This means `bitcoin-cli` and `bitcoin-wallet`
will try to use the wrong datadir and show errors if they are called without a
-datadir arguments, and `bitcoind` will appear to work but use a different
datadir, not loading the same wallets and settings, and downloading blocks into
the wrong place.

There are also more subtle inconsistencies between GUI and CLI selection of
datadirs such as #27273 where GUI might ignore a datadir= line in a
bitcoin.conf that CLI tools would apply.

This PR gets rid of inconsistencies between GUI and CLI tools and makes them
use the same datadir setting by default. It is followup to
https://github.com/bitcoin-core/gui/pull/602 which made GUI and CLI tools use
the same `-dbcache`, `-par`, `-spendzeroconfchange`, `-signer`, `-upnp`,
`-natpmp`, `-listen`, `-server`, `-prune`, `-proxy`, `-onion`, and `-lang`
settings as long as they loaded the same datadir.

The reason for GUI and CLI tools using inconsistent datadirs, is that GUI
stores the datadir path in a `strDataDir` field in
`.config/Bitcoin/Bitcoin-Qt.conf`[^1] which CLI tools ignore. This PR changes
the GUI to instead store the datadir path at the default datadir location
`~/.bitcoin`[^2] as a symlink that CLI tools will already follow, or as a text
file if the filesystem does not support creating symlinks.

If upgrading from a previous version of the GUI and there is only a GUI
datadir, the `strDataDir` setting will be automatically migrated to a symlink
so CLI tools will start using it as well. If CLI and GUI tools are currently
using different default datadirs, the GUI will show a prompt allowing either of
the datadirs to be loaded and optionally set as the common default going
forward.

5864569922

ryanofsky force-pushed on Oct 15, 2025

DrahtBot removed the label Needs rebase on Oct 15, 2025

DrahtBot added the label Needs rebase on Oct 22, 2025

DrahtBot commented at 10:16 am on October 22, 2025: contributor

🐙 This pull request conflicts with the target branch and needs rebase.

Make GUI and CLI tools use the same datadir #27409

Code Coverage & Benchmarks

Reviews

Conflicts

LLM Linter (✨ experimental)