Confusion between directory and project names (cable export)

[gdt]

Summary

The way file and directory names are handled is confusing, and not explained in the documentation. This is not the usual bug report, but explaining what I'm trying to do and how it's going badly. I'm not sure if the right fix is docs or code.

Everything is working ok, except that names end up in a way that seems wrong/unhelpful.

Environment

• NetBSD 10 amd64, qgis 3.34.10, QFieldSync 4.10.1
• Pixel with QField 3.4.0
• Nextcloud for transporting files

Naming scheme (repro recipie)

I have multiple qgis projects for different purposes, e.g. micromapping one site vs gathering a class of POIs over a town-wide area. I'll call them foo and bar. I want to use QField with both of them. I want to export and load them both, so that I am ready to grab my GNSS receiver and gather data without advanced planning. I am doing this all as "cable", not cloud, because a) I don't want the data on the cloud (in part) and b) a commercial cloud account might be needed. And, it's just me, one qgis computer, one phone.

As part of this strategy, my layers are set up as

• real data in gpkg: ocpy
• TMS imagery: use directly
• capture layers: offline editing

Essentially, I set up 5 layers in a per-project capture.gpkg, for points/lines/polygons, a point layer for tracklog, and a point layer for topo (like points, but no names/notes, and understood to be ground-level data). I intend to only write those layers in QFIeld, and then select/copy/edit/think to merge the filed-collected points to my real data, often cleaning up phone-written name abbreviations etc.

I created ~/Nextcloud/QField, within that foo and bar, and exported to foo/from-qgis and bar/from-qgis. I intended to export to foo/YYYYMMDD. (I know the docs say import once, but I like to export, and then export again, as backup to get data to my nextcoud, and then import to qgis/ cleanup, re-export and re-import to QField.)

When in QField I import foo/from-gis, I get a directory/project from-gis, and when i import bar/from-qgis, it collies.

I expect the QField projects to be named foo and bar, using the names from the qgis projects. Instead, it's using the directory name. This is inconsistent because the export name is unconstained and it feels just like a place to put bits.

What I'd like to see different

One of the following. I prefer the first.

QFIeld project/directory name change

Change QField so that when using + and selecting a directory, QField's idea of the name (arguably the dir name inside QFIeld's private data) is taken from foo.qgs, and the name of the directory is ignored. I think this will match expectations for most people.

Clarify and caution in the docs

Explain that QFIeld will name projects by the directory name, so that one should export foo.qgz to /some/path/to/foo at least when that is on the phone and used with + in local files.

Explain that one should export to a new directory, perhaps foo-yyyymmdd, next to foo, not in it, when sending data from QField back to whereever on the phone can be a shared filesystem back to the qgis computer.