Major system changes can break this file (either intentionally or by accident). This can mean that the old config file needs to be deleted; thus losing all settings.
I've taken to keeping "good" CCHDKx.CFG files for my cameras on the PC and downloading them over USB with chdkptp as part of the script I used when I update the CHDK image. As mentioned, major system changes break this although its not a frequent thing.
I'm thinking it might be worth exploring the idea of splitting the settings into different files based on function groupings. For example saving the user menu settings into a separate file. Any thoughts?
From my perspective, the only defaults that I really care about are the OSD settings, turning off the Help popup, and (now) disabling shortcuts. Of those, only the OSD setting (screen positions) takes enough time to setup that it matters.
I think I've mused before that allowing the icon screen positions to be camera specific would be nice. That way the person doing to the port gets to work around Canon icons. But I guess that's really off-topic here.
Worth doing, or a waste of time? If it's worth doing, any ideas on how best to group the settings?
On a 1 to 10 in value, I'd rate this a 4. Per camera icon settings or some of the stuff tsvstar did with his UI functions (like user menu script activation rather than just setting the current one) might be more interesting for example.
On a related note, something that might be more valuable, would be to add some sort of version ID / CRC / checksum magic number thing to the CFG file (or files). That way CHDK would not load an incompatible CFG file after an incompatible rev - just revert to the defaults from the build?