Automatically open a pre-configured project file when QGIS starts

[batpad]

Context

Breaking out of @geohacker's comment here -

We will create a project file with all the layers and configuration we need, and then have QGIS automatically load the project file on startup.

Proposal

The cleanest way is to probably write a startup script that QGIS will execute on startup: https://docs.qgis.org/3.28/en/docs/pyqgis_developer_cookbook/intro.html#running-python-code-when-qgis-starts

In this script, we can handle opening of a project file.

Questions:

• Should we add the project file to this repository and have it built as part of this image? OR
• Should we manage the project file separately and have it at some URL that gets pulled in at build time? OR
• Should the project file live at a URL and get pulled in at run-time?

Anyways, we'll start off just making sure the startup script works to open a project file, and then we can figure details.

cc @yuvipanda @geohacker

Updates and actions

No response

[batpad]

@geohacker - in your notes above you recommend writing a python script to load the project file on startup. Looking at the qgis docs, one can also start qgis with a project file with like qgis -p <path/to/project.file> - is there a good reason to not just use that? I can see that putting it in a python script gives us more flexibility, but just trying to understand if we can start off just using the CLI flag to open a project file when starting QGIS.

From the output of qgis --help:

[-p, --project projectfile]	load the given QGIS project