Uninstalling plugins

[Lefteous]

TC offers a plugin install mechanism which copies files from the plugin archive to the destination folder and registers the plugin. Fine.

But what uninstalling plugins? Why should I keep a plugin on my HDD when I no longer need it? I can only remove it which means unregistering.

When a new plugin version is installed the old version is just overwritten which means old files are kept no matter if they are required or not.

And why are unregistered plugins not listed as such but if I want to use them again I have to manually install oder register them again ?


I think these are absolutely basic things.

[ghisler(Author)]

In the age of terabyte harddisks and >100GB SSDs a 100k plugin is almost irrelevant. You can disable the plugin via Configuration - Options - Plugins, but removing the files could be dangerous, e.g. when the plugin stores user data in the plugin directory, or the user installs multiple plugins to the same directory.

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)

In the age of terabyte harddisks and >100GB SSDs a 100k plugin is almost irrelevant. You can disable the plugin via Configuration - Options - Plugins, but removing the files could be dangerous, e.g. when the plugin stores user data in the plugin directory, or the user installs multiple plugins to the same directory.

I have to admit that this are all good points. I guess manually uninstalling could be the better option as plugins never had a mechanism to declare a set of files to remove when uninstalling.

Anyway - what do you think about my idea to introduce disabling/enabling of plugins? I think removing is often used for disabling although just disabling was the desired action.

[Lefteous]

Here is a concrete example where not uninstalling is a real problem. I try to reduce my DirSizeCalc plugin to just wdx and wdx64 and drop the uwdx. As the uwdx has a higher priority I simply cannot perform this change.

[seb-]

I'm not just replying for TC matters here in this post....

In the age of terabyte harddisks and >100GB SSDs a 100k plugin is almost irrelevant.

This argument is similar to the one i saw by a Microsoft Engineer on a MSDN Forum discussing the Windows7 winsxs folder size and how it doesn't matter because HDDs are soooo cheap nowadays.

Well... 100k might not be that much, but if everything and everyone would argue like that and every developer will implement his software following that mantra we will just speed up the need for bigger HDDs without real necessity.

You can or at least could also see it in website development. Each time there is/was an evolution in access line speeds there was also an increase in website overload which made the speed gain become 0 again and the ones who are/were not blessed with xDSL/Fiber or whatever you can think of were left behind...

(i could now begin a discussion about how the society is great in developing energy saving electronic products on the one hand but then ruins the success completely by having everyone buying more and more electronics so that the need for energy is even bigger than before - it is a similar direction.)

Also... have you considered Backups? You will have the unnecessary file x times in your backups.

Have you considered anti virus scans?


Christian, I agree to some point, but just saying "ahh this 100k wont hurt anyone" thats just not an answer i would have expected from you.



+1 for a nicer Plugin Management. It does not have to be or become rocket science though

[Lefteous]

2seb-
Thanks for your support


2ghisler(Author)

So in order to make my request more concrete what about adding a section to pluginst.inf where I could add a list of files that will be uninstalled when the new plugin (version) is installed?

[ghisler(Author)]

Currently this isn't planned. Regarding the uwdx, couldn't you simply include a 0 byte uwdx? TC should try to load it, which will fail, then it will load the right plugin file.

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)

Regarding the uwdx, couldn't you simply include a 0 byte uwdx? TC should try to load it, which will fail, then it will load the right plugin file.

Thanks - I will try this workaround.