SQL Developer Preferences Getting Lost After Restarting (Doc ID 2328148.1)

Last updated on FEBRUARY 25, 2021

Applies to:

Symptoms

Changing SQL Developer preferences at runtime are not getting saved.
Re-starting SQL Developer showing default preferences.

Some Examples:
1) Preferences > Code Editor > Format > Advanced Format > Under the Line Breaks section: "On procedure arguments".

2) Preferences > Code Editor > Format > Advanced Format > Under the Line Breaks section: "On ANSI".

3) Preferences > Code Editor > Format > Advanced Format > Under the Indentation section: "Indent spaces".

Steps to reproduce

1) Download and extract SQL Developer into a folder location like the following one. (Has to be a large folder name)

C:\oracle\sqldeveloper1731

2) After extracting, structure is like this:

C:\oracle\sqldeveloper1731\sqldeveloper-17.3.1.279.0537-x64\sqldeveloper

3) Create a custom folder to hold application settings:

C:\oracle\sqldeveloper1731\sqldeveloper-17.3.1.279.0537-x64\sqldeveloper\xxCustom\settings

4) To make it portable add the following line to the bottom of configuration file to point to step 3 folder:

C:\oracle\sqldeveloper1731\sqldeveloper-17.3.1.279.0537-x64\sqldeveloper\ide\bin\jdk.conf file

5. Run sqldeveloper.exe:

C:\oracle\sqldeveloper1731\sqldeveloper-17.3.1.279.0537-x64\sqldeveloper\sqldeveloper.exe

6. You will see the application settings now get stored here:

7. Go in and update the formatter settings, save, close out of sqldeveloper, open again, go back into the formatter settings and you will see they get reset to the defaults.

Changes

Cause

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