A way to install only the 64 bit plugin files

[Lefteous]

Is there a way for a plugin author to force TC to only install the files required for the 64 plugin to work? This would be great for plugin archives which host both versions.
Of course the other way round also makes sense (would only work for TC 8 and higher).

[ghisler(Author)]

No, the idea of a combined plugin is to use it in both TC versions. With today's large harddisks, disk space isn't a problem any more, but download time may be a bigger problem. Therefore relatively small plugins should use combined plugin archives, while large plugins may better use two separate installers.

[Orochi]

2ghisler(Author)
Why not just make a section in the pluginst.inf which will install the correct bit of the plugin? The download can still contain both versions.

[ghisler(Author)]

Does it really matter? Most plugins are less than 1 MB. A current 1 Terabyte SSD costs about 100$, so a 1 MB plugin doesn't even take one millionth of that space...

[Orochi]

Does it really matter? Most plugins are less than 1 MB. A current 1 Terabyte SSD costs about 100$, so a 1 MB plugin doesn't even take one millionth of that space...

It does matter, because you are wrong.
Most plugins are now between 2mb - 5mb x 2 for both bits. With some going as high as 17mb (SQLiteViewer) or 30mb (Diskinternals Reader).
My plugins folder takes 315mb. So no, not under 1mb.
Do you not consider people who use portable version of TC from their usb sticks ? Not everyone carries a 1tb usb.
I am not pushing for this feature at all, it's just that as an author of one of the legendary programs, your reasoning was not convincing enough.

[Dalai]

2Orochi
Here's my take on it. People creating portable TCs should be able to (manually) delete files they don't need and edit wincmd.ini according to their needs. There's nothing fancy to do either, just deletion of a few files and adjustment of plugin paths (or even just filenames). Sometimes there are even other files in a plugin package that are not needed, or you want to have a statically linked file instead of a dynamically linked one - nothing TC could do about either of these.

Regards
Dalai

[petermad]

and adjustment of plugin paths

No need to, almost all pluins are written in wincmd.ini with their 32bit extension (e.g. .wlx and not .wlx64) - 64bit TC automatically looks for the corresponding file with the 64 bit extension - if it wasn't like this, TC couldn't be installed as a combined 32bit/64bit version with common wincmd.ini file.

[Dalai]

2petermad
Hm, I thought that's what the [*Plugins64] sections with the $checksum$ keys are for. But maybe I'm wrong about this.

Regards
Dalai

[petermad]

Hm, I thought that's what the [*Plugins64] sections with the $checksum$ keys are for. But maybe I'm wrong about this.

Those 64-sections are generated by TC. You can delete them, and they will just be recreated.

[macleod]

@Dalai I'm using just 64-bit version of TC and deleted all wlx, wcx, wfx and wdx files + included files where I was able to determine they are needed just for 32-bit version. And nothing else was needed, all plugins are working as before deletion.

[ghisler(Author)]

The [*Plugins64] keeps track of which plugins from the [*Plugins] sections are available in a 64-bit version.