Ok I figured it out

The Official addon folder cannot have the same root folder as the folder where you store your community addons.

Regards

Works Great

 

yep thanks that's it, i will add a test in the options screen to avoid that.

On 12/29/2020 at 4:48 PM, Bad_T said:

i think if you copy the 'dynamic link' it will just copy all the files (so you will have your files 'doubled') .. the link in itself can not be copied.

This is correct, yes.   I have just verified it on my end.

If you want to experiment, you can create these links by hand with the mklink command.  eg, you could try something like this (using paths on my system, you'd need to adjust to match, of course):

mklink /j d:\MSFS\Official\OneStore\some-package "d:\MSFS Addons\Official\some-package"

Assuming you'd already copied some-package to the addons directory.

yes @kaosfere thanks for the input, btw i noticed later that if you move the folder the link will still work and there will be no duplicates. So by copying the link you will get duplicated files but moving the link will not and the links still work.

To make all this easier and without the need to move stuff manually, i added a little option to manage the official addons for people interested in doing that, version and instructions are on the previous page.

Thank you.

 

 

Edited January 2, 20215 yr by Bad_T

This is really very clever, thank you very much. I recently downloaded the Project Mega Pack v12 which is 770+liveries. This makes the Community folder very hard to keep track of. I use all the liveries for Vatsim but only select a few for my own flights. Using your program I created a folder called Project Mega Pack with sub folders for the various aircraft. This way I can quickly select all or just select a few liveries. Works perfect!

John

Glad you find it useful and thanks for the feedback @johnh1984, appreciated !

5 minutes ago, johnh1984 said:

Using your program I created a folder called Project Mega Pack with sub folders for the various aircraft.

I do the exact same thing.   It really boggles me that they're not doing this by default.   But a number of things about that package leave me nonplussed.  I'll avoid getting into that here, though, since it's pretty far off-topic. 🙂

Hi;

I tried this and works fine on my end , as well. I wanted to inform. @Bad_T is great as always. Thanks.

Is it possible to put official GA planes in this folder (Because I would like to disable them,  I do not use GA generally ) ?

Edit: I tried disabling some GA aircraft but did not work. MSFS wanted to update and complete the missing offical items, at start.

Edited January 2, 20215 yr by kt069

13 hours ago, Bad_T said:

(maybe copying instead of moving would work),

I've found that to be true. I've "moved" stuff out of the official folder to be able to use the tool, and I also let products install into the community folder and then "move" them to my addons folders. In all cases I actually copy the folders, remove the encryption in the new folders, then delete the originals. I assume the encryption is just set to stop any inadvertant overwriting or something, the sim doesn't seem to actually need the encryption set.

I kinda like the sound of the tool using the official folder as well. It potentially makes product updates easier, so I'll probably try that version.

As usual, well impressed with this utility - couldn't run the sim without it (well, I could, but I'd need a hill of a lot of batch files to do it), thanks!

I believe if the marketplace addon is moved to the official folder in addon linker and you then activate the addon back to the offical folder MSFS will update it correctly in the addon linker folder. The reason I believe this is if you activate a addon that is in the addon linker folder Marketplace sees it as installed

Regards

Edited January 2, 20215 yr by Denwagg

3 minutes ago, Denwagg said:

I believe if the marketplace addon is moved to the official folder in addon linker and you then activate the addon back to the offical folder MSFS will update it correctly in the addon linker folder. The reason I believe this is if you activate a addon that is in the addon linker folder Marketplace sees it as installed

Yep, that should do it. The whole idea of the symlink is to make it look like that (the symlink entry) is where the actual files are. Nice thing about this is being able to do this with the official folder as well as the community folder. I also have groups setup in the linker to activate all the sceneries handled by the Contrail installer (for example) so I can do a quick check for updates to all those sceneries. This really is a wonderful little utility.

Disregard

Edited January 2, 20215 yr by Denwagg

yes @kt069 your conclusions are correct, if you disable official addons, the 'interal sim addons manager' will not see them so it will ask you to redownload them. That's normal and there's not much that can be done about it i guess unfortunately. That's also why i didn't really want to mess up with that folder when i started the tool, people need to be aware of how it works otherwise they might end up not understanding what happens with the 'addon manager' and think something is broken even if it's not really.

@Denwagg, the disable all addons will disable all addons, also those in the official folder. If you want to disable only those in the official folder you can select the 'official' folder and, in the right click menu, there is an option called 'disable all addons in the selected folder'. This option will then disable everything in 'official' and leave the rest untouched. That should do what your are looking for, feel free to let me know if it doesn't.  There are no 'check box' in front on the first level (it's not there for the other addons folders either like you can see on your 'MSFS_Addons' folder, can't really remember why i didnt add it there if it was some technical issue or something else 😶).

 

Just tested some of the presets. They work perfect. You need to work for asobo for some reason you get things right the first time.

Regards

On 1/2/2021 at 3:45 PM, Bad_T said:

How to use it :

1 : In the options screen there is a new option to enable the 'official' folder management. Enable the checkbox and set your folders

2 : when that option is enable, a new 'folder' will appear in your custom addons folders. It's called OFFICIAL. Every addons that you put in that folder will have its link created in the official folder and not in the community folder

 

Hi @Bad_T, I just tried this out and have a question. Is it possible to implement this without having to create the new folder as in your step 2? Maybe just ticking a check box against any folder in the existing "addons" folder to mark it as to use the Official rather than the Community folder for the symlink?

Reason I ask is that I have maybe 30 different scenery region folders in my addons folder environment, and it seems to me I'd have to duplicate that whole folder structure to allow me to retain the ability to specify a region as off or on and also have subfolders for community or official.

Not a big deal. I like the idea of being able to handle stuff in the official folder via your tool, but it's not critical at all. I've already moved anything I bought in the official store out of the official folder and put it in an addon folder so it is managed by the tool anyway. Having such addons in the community folder rather than the official folder doesn't make any difference to the sim, with the one possible exception of getting updates via the store. It would be nice to be able to have a single addon group containing all the store-bought products so I could activate them all at once to check for updates. But that's pretty much the only reason, as far as I can tell.

Don't spend any time on this just on my behalf. I would never have asked about this but for the fact that you'd already put a test version out there, but if you do decide to implement it live, I think a simple (assuming it is simple!) check box per folder would be the best option.

As ever, thanks for a great utility.