During development this 'settings' dir should be copied as 'settings_user/ndff_settings' in a directory NEXT to it.

During development, the 'settings'-dipicts the MAIN settings and is the canonical master/source of all settings
NOTE: this settings is also in git/github, so should NEVER contain real datasource or api credentials!!
THAT is what the settings_user directory is for: THAT on is in the .gitignore file!!

The 'settings' and 'settings_user' in de development tree mimic two sets of settings that will be merged.

In a real world scenario, the idea is that a user or organisation has one central 'main-settings'-dir
and it can be overridden by settings in a project or datatype 'settings'-dir.

So for example:
- the api credentials will be in a central directory in a directory which will be used as MAIN-SETTINGS
- then for a certain datasource or project a second directory USER-SETTINGS is used (which does NOT need to have any api credentials)
and that will contain the datasource typical settings (like db credentials, specific field mappings, and even maybe
project specific field names/translations or descriptions)

The MAIN-SETTINGS should at least contain:
- ndff_api.csv (which contain the api credentials)
- field_mappings.csv (contain all mandatory fields and mappings (to same field name, so NON mapping) to be overridden
- client_settings.csv (containing field-> text translations/texts, descriptions and search uri's)

The USER-SETTINGS are data or user specific (but take care that these will NOT contain credentials!!)
It can contain the same files as the MAIN-SETTINGS, but also:
- a datasource (pointing to the datasource to use)
- can contain for every field a 'mappings_<FIElD>.csv' containing specific mappings.

FOR DEVELOPMENT though:
'settings' == main settings (so NO api credentials)  << THIS ONE WILL BE PACKAGED IN THE QGIS PLUGIN !!
'settings_user' == user settings (and contain the credentials)