Where are IDEA run/debug configuration *defaults* stored?

Question

It's easy to share run configurations instances in IDEA - simply instantiate a configuration and check "Share":

I'm already version controlling the resulting files in .idea/runConfigurations (in the relevant project) and part of ~/.IntelliJIdea* (for puppetising desktops). However, I can't find where IDEA stores the configuration defaults - it doesn't seem to be in either of these places. They must obviously be persisting it somewhere, because it works across restarts. The official documentation is unusually unhelpful in this case:

This check box is not available when editing the run/debug configuration defaults.

The particular use case is that I'd like all future "Behave" configurations to have the environment variable DISPLAY set to :1 to run browser tests in VNC rather than in the foreground.

Answer 1

1. Defaults (the ones that you configure under Defaults node from your screenshot) are per-project .. and therefore stored together with other non-shared configs in .idea/workspace.xml (which is not supposed to be stored under VCS as it contains developer/computer specific settings).

2. You can find such entries in the aforementioned file under <component name="RunManager" node. Default entries will have default="true" attribute.

3. There is no defaults of defaults for run/debug configs that you can edit/provision (configs that would be applied to any new projects). They are not stored in separate config file(s) on IDE level but initiated directly from plugin code .