Running gramps on live data/installed version with main/debug

Running Windows/latest (installed) vs git/main (debug/development)

I am running debug using vscode as a “gramps” user from my repo to isolate any local/database interaction between my debug sessions and just working on my family tree. Of course there was once where I forgot to run my “run as user” script to start vscode, and I totally scrogged my main family tree file. It was a painful recovery, as none of the gramps recovery options worked, it did not even detect that anything was wrong with the scrogged entry.

But I now have several new features that I wish to utilize on my personal family tree. So I export to a .ged file as my regular user, copy that to my gramps user, import and go to town. I am adding media files to my development interest next, so I am planning to keep a directory at the top level of my hard disk (C:\family_tree_pics), which I hate, but realize it’s likely the easiest path forward.

Anyway, I was interested to know how other developers manage this aspect of development.

A side-question would be - I see references to multimedia, gallery and thumbnails, so what are they used for if you can’t display them in the reports?