57 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Interesting - I do not get that.

Neither do I except with the Honeycomb AFC_Bridge app for the Bravo.  And despite that indication the app still works.  I do not see that with any other app.

Edited August 17, 20214 yr by fppilot

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

The problem is when you move addons out of the community folder to your own folder, then you will get that msg in the msfs addons linker app "cannot read the manifest.json" file.

Not sure about this, but I suspect it's one of two things. Either an encryption issue - you can't propery move encrypted files around successfully, or you also get this with the "xxx.CVT" folders, which are files msfs builds to contain the files converted dynamically by the sim for an addon that has been converted from an older product (typically aircraft converted from an old FSX version). Folders ending in ".CVT" are best left in place in the community folder anyway, or at least that's what I've found. There are usually only a few of them unless you're running lots of old converted aircraft in the sim.

Glenn & fppilot, do you guys have MS store or the steam version? It's strange how some are getting this "cannot read manifest.json" issue while others aren't. Bert also reports the same thing as me, when dragging addons out of the community folder into your own, and I want to try to see if I can find out what the cause of this is. I had to spend several hours trying to redownload and locate most of my addons all over again just so they would correctly show up in the addons linker app. Was a real PITA!

hello @captain420

yes your issue with not reading manifest.json folder is probably caused by moving things outside of the community folder, it happened to a few users having the ms-store version, i can't really do anything about it unfortunately, it's some sort of security features, but yeah i'm sorry for your troubles.

there are some workaround that maybe can work like zipping the files inside another folder, but it's all very technical but for some that fixed the issue. Moving them straight away just doesn't work for some users with ms-store. Once moved you'll probably notice that you can't even read the file with notepad, it's just blocked by the operating system, crazy stuff.

the only thing i could do is put warnings everywhere (2 readme files inside the zip, on the main page of the addon, in the FAQ, even on this thread when i posted a few days ago). Once again it's someone at microsoft that one day had a great idea and decided to render files not working when moved around 😜, i'm not sure how good that idea is but i can't do anything about it but yeah, once again, i'm sorry you're having difficulties with this especially if you need to redownload some files 😞

Feel free to msg me directly if you need more help 🍺

Edited August 17, 20214 yr by Bad_T

9 hours ago, andy1252 said:

 Folders ending in ".CVT" are best left in place in the community folder anyway, or at least that's what I've found. There are usually only a few of them unless you're running lots of old converted aircraft in the sim.

yep @andy1252, CVT folders do not have manifest.json files so they will always show with 'can not read' but that is not a problem (i should probably detect that if a folder ends by _CVT i should not put that message, because it's normal that they dont have manifest file).

What a user on this forum suggested if you want to put the CVT in your custom addon folder, and i thought it was a good idea and i'm actually now using this now, is to create a fake manifest.json file in that folder (just the copy the one that comes with the main addon it's based on) so that it's recognised as an addon, then you can set it as a dependency of the main addon. So everytime you enable the main addon the CVT folder will also be enabled automatically. It's just an idea, letting them in the community folder is also fine for sure.

 

Edited August 17, 20214 yr by Bad_T

2 hours ago, Bad_T said:

hello @captain420

yes your issue with not reading manifest.json folder is probably caused by moving things outside of the community folder, it happened to a few users having the ms-store version, i can't really do anything about it unfortunately, it's some sort of security features, but yeah i'm sorry for your troubles.

there are some workaround that maybe can work like zipping the files inside another folder, but it's all very technical but for some that fixed the issue. Moving them straight away just doesn't work for some users with ms-store. Once moved you'll probably notice that you can't even read the file with notepad, it's just blocked by the operating system, crazy stuff.

the only thing i could do is put warnings everywhere (2 readme files inside the zip, on the main page of the addon, in the FAQ, even on this thread when i posted a few days ago). Once again it's someone at microsoft that one day had a great idea and decided to render files not working when moved around 😜, i'm not sure how good that idea is but i can't do anything about it but yeah, once again, i'm sorry you're having difficulties with this especially if you need to redownload some files 😞

Feel free to msg me directly if you need more help 🍺

I also have the ms-store version, but not have this problem.  I think the key is to specify the install directory as something outside of normal Windows directories.  I made my initial install to a separate drive and directory, outside the windows infrastructure.  I've never experienced an issue moving things in and out of the community folder, nor had any problems with your excellent linker program.  It's a pain for those that accepted the default install, but if they are interested in further mods, it's probably in their best interest to do a reinstall to a custom directory.

 

I believe my MSFS install is outside the normal Windows directories. I have my MSFS installed on D:\WpSystem\S-1-xxxxxxxx\etc.

Is that the default location?

13 minutes ago, captain420 said:

I believe my MSFS install is outside the normal Windows directories. I have my MSFS installed on D:\WpSystem\S-1-xxxxxxxx\etc.

Is that the default location?

That is the default location if you installed somewhere other than the C Drive.

What may be significant is where your community folder is located.

 

I have a MS install but changed my community folder location in the game to point to:

D:\Games\Microsoft\fs2020\localcache\packages\Community

With my community folder located there I do not have any issues with addon linker.

 

4 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

That is the default location if you installed somewhere other than the C Drive.

What may be significant is where your community folder is located.

 

I have a MS install but changed my community folder location in the game to point to:

D:\Games\Microsoft\fs2020\localcache\packages\Community

With my community folder located there I do not have any issues with addon linker.

 

How do you change that? I want to move my community folder out of the default location so I don't have to deal with these annoying problems. Currently my community folder is located in: D:\WpSystem\S-1xxxx\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community

15 minutes ago, captain420 said:

I believe my MSFS install is outside the normal Windows directories. I have my MSFS installed on D:\WpSystem\S-1-xxxxxxxx\etc.

Is that the default location?

Likely.  Looks like you chose a different drive, but default directory. I installed mine to d:\games\msfs.  My community folder is d:\games\msfs\community.  There are always going to be some system files installed to your root drive's (c:) system directories, but as long as you get your community directory out of that structure you will be better off.

 

Darn, well looks like I'm out of luck then and won't be able to fix the problem unless I uninstall MSFS and reinstall all over from scratch again. 😞 Sigh.

1 minute ago, captain420 said:

How do you change that? I want to move my community folder out of the default location so I don't have to deal with these annoying problems. Currently my community folder is located in: D:\WpSystem\S-1xxxx\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community

The only way I know for sure is a re-install.  That's why I did, soon after my initial install when I saw the ridiculous file structure it used as default.  Someone may be aware of an easier way, because a re-install is painful, but I decided it was worth biting the bullet on that front.

 

2 minutes ago, captain420 said:

Darn, well looks like I'm out of luck then and won't be able to fix the problem unless I uninstall MSFS and reinstall all over from scratch again. 😞 Sigh.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the exact step in the install where you have complete control over the directory, because they don't make it obvious, but it is there.  You just have to take your time at each screen, and make sure you look for customization options.  Someone that has done it more recently than I have probably has better instructions.

 

16 minutes ago, captain420 said:

How do you change that? I want to move my community folder out of the default location so I don't have to deal with these annoying problems. Currently my community folder is located in: D:\WpSystem\S-1xxxx\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community

You can edit the UserCfg.opt

Change the path after InstalledPackagesPath (the last line of this file), and move your installed packages (the folder containing the folders Community and Official and all their subfolders) to the new location.

I believe it can also be set in developer mode while in the game itself.

1. Go to Options / General.
2. Click on "Developers" which you will find at the bottom of the list on the left.
3. Switch Developers Mode on.
4. On the Dev Menu select Tools / Virtual File System.
5. The community folder location can be found under "Watched Bases"

Edited August 18, 20214 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

2 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

You can edit the UserCfg.opt

Change the path after InstalledPackagesPath,  the last line of this file, and move your installed packages (the folder containing the folders Community and Official and all their subfolders) to the new location.

I believe it can also be set in developer mode while in the game itself.

So I do not need to reinstall MSFS at all then? I really hope it's as easy as that! That will save me so much time and trouble!