Quick question for @Bad_T or anyone else if they know.

I've gotten my system all nicely set up for my default aircraft hiding obsession now, but as part of doing this I realise that I find the dependencies viewer a bit of a handful. Basically I can't figure out how to use it! I know there's no official help info, but none of the stuff I've looked at as per the suggestions in the "help" menu seems to even mention dependencies. Anybody know of a really good explanation anywhere?

I suspect a lot of my scenery dependencies aren't working as planned anymore because of the whole thing about the subject of a dependency having to be a specific addon, rather than a folder of them. Things I'd set up originally are now only partial dependencies where I've added more addons to an existing folder (eg adding new airports to a "SoCal" folder)

Anyway, if anybody has got a good dependencies / viewer doc source that'd be great. And if not and if I ever figure it all out I'll write one.

cheers,

Andy

The dependencies viewer allows you to see all the dependencies linked to a particular addon folder. All you have to do is to use the search field to find out. To me, its use has been very intuitive so far. I recommend to do the search when the Group by Addon is selected.

Edited November 16, 20232 yr by edpatino

yes, as @edpatino it's just a viewer that allows you see how dependencies are set depending on your selection at the top ('group by addon' or 'group by dependency')

• which dependencies are set for a particular addons  (group by addon)
• for which addon(s) an addon is set as a dependency (group by dependency)

So there's not much to do on that screen, it's just for informationnal purposes and to have a global view showing how dependencies are set (otherwise you would have to look at each addon individually in the main screen to find their dependencies or to check if it's a set as a dependency of another addon).

So for example if you are using something like 'dave's 3d people library' that is used by many addons, you would be able to easily see all the addons that you have set that to use that library as a dependency, it would be harder to know if there wasn't some sort of global viewer.

🍻

 

 

Edited November 16, 20232 yr by Bad_T

Thanks, @edpatino and @Bad_T. I'd sort of got that, but had hoped I was missing something and that there was more to it. I guess my problem is that I'm probably trying to push the linker harder than it was meant to be pushed, condition-wise. Because the "subject" of a condition can only be an individual addon, and not any kind of "group" folder, it makes the dependencies viewer not hugely useful for me. For example, in my whole scenery subsystem I have a total of nearly 2000 addon folders (scenery packages), divided into regions. I then have maybe 100 global packages that I run regardless of where I plan to fly. Within the scenery tree, I have just a couple of simple conditions (if airport A enabled, also enable airport B type stuff), but mostly my scenery dependencies are in a separate folder (I've labelled it "global conditional") which includes subfolders or addons or individual addons. For example, I have a conditional folder called "UK POIs", which contains about 40 little UK addons like bridges, piers and other tiny extras. I would like all those to be conditionally activated if I select any single entry in my main "UK" folder, which itself contains around 200 addons (folders). But I can't select "UK POIs" and then "set it as a dependency for other addons" and chose "UK" as the target (meaning "if I select anything in the UK folder then also activate UK POIs"). Instead, I have to select each individual addon in UK POIs and then I can at least select the branch "UK" as the target (meaning "if I select anything in the UK folder then also activate this individual addon"). But that has two results - first is that I have do that 40 times (for each of my UK POI addons) to achieve the desired result, and then secondly the dependencies viewer is way too difficult to read and follow, because it also only deals with individual addons.

I also have, for example, individual conditional addons that I have got tied in to my entire US branch (300+ individual addons).

Don't get me wrong Bad_T, I'm not in any way complaining. I can see I'm trying to do stuff that this was not designed to do, and I can certainly achieve a similar sort of result by just arranging stuff differently and enabling some things by hand instead of conditionally. I dare say I could even just leave a bunch of stuff in the community folder all the time but that offends my sense of organisation and tidyness. Plus, it reduces the likelihood of obscure clashes between addons.

Addons Linker is still the single best utility for MSFS by a very long shot.

cheers,

Andy

First of all, really no prob at all 🍻, feel free to add your comments and feedback for features that need improvements, it's all very well received 👍. I am well aware of some features that are a bit 'cheap' 😱 and I'm always interested to hear feedback and ideas for improvements.With time i added so many options based on individual requests that probably quite a few them could make good use of some little tweaks.

Now to be 100% honest 😵, since the announcement of MSFS2024 i'm a bit skeptical to start big changes (those potentially introducing breaking changes to the existing code and thus requiring more time) not knowing if everything will be put to trash in a few months (hopefully MSFS2024 will have a complete and more pleasant way to manage addons built-in to replace that single 'throw it all in' 🙈 community folder). Don't get me wrong though, I do still provide all the support i can and gladly and regularly provide new versions 'on demand' for requests that do not require too many changes so it's not like i left the boat 😉.

Back to your specific issue ('it's about time 😁'). Yep, i agree with what you said, the 'dependencies' are currently not really suited for what you are trying to do. The dependency idea was really more thought out as a way to activate addons that are required by other addons, not really to activate a big groups of addons based on another selection. So, for example, it was meant to be used with libraries that need to be activated only when at least one of their 'parent' addon is activated (otherwise they are useless) and other types of addons that require each other to work properly.

Activating several addons at the same time was mainly adressed via the 'presets' feature. With the latest version it's not only possible to activate presets, but also to deactivate only the addons contained in a specific preset, all this can be done in a single click mostly. But yes there are certainly several shortcomings with the presets too, you need to maintain them, they can be a bit confusing until you are really used on how they work and, if you have a lot of them, it might become a bit (read 'very' 👿) annoying. The presets feature is available since almost the very start of the tool, it certainly requires some sort of big overhaul, but i never really had the fantastic idea on how to do it 🤔. If someone is reading this (probably no one because the message is already way too long) and has ideas i would be interested to know.

Anyway, for your specific request, presets are not the solution either (oh .. so all that text above for nothing 😱) because the 'When I activate one addon in the UK folder and it should activate everything that is in the UK POI folder' is not something that presets would be able to do as of now. So yeah you would need some sort of new functionality (not even sure that 'dependencies accepting folders' would be enough to satisfy all possible usage scenarios), i need to think more about this. Maybe i can create a specific option for that to avoid mixing up with the already somewhat complicated existing stuff.

Only little thing i can think of with the current version is that you can create multiple dependencies more easily with the specific options 'add cumulative dependencies...'. With that option you would be able to select all UK addons at once (1ish click) and then select all the dependencies (so the UK POI) that will be attached to those addons also in 1 click if they are in a specific folder. By doing so, you should have all UK POI dependencies activated whenever you click on one of the main UK addon. Not 100% sure if that would work for you and, as explained above, not sure if the dependencies are very well suited for that (and you would obviously need to update the dependencies when you add new UK or UK POI addons).

Create maybe a little backup of your configuration files (there is a litle button for that in the options screen) before so you can roollback easily if that doens't work for you.

Hope it's not too confusing to read ! 🙃

Thanks again for your input. 🥂

 

Edited November 17, 20232 yr by Bad_T

Hi @Bad_T, and thanks for your reply. I agree with you that it would be probably best to see how MSFS 2024 pans out before considering any major changes to the AL. And certainly don't go messing around doing major stuff just for a crazy person like me!

I've just been through the exercise of getting all the default aircraft under control (i.e. not visible on the MSFS menu unless I want them there) and that has worked out really well using your AL with Guenseli's exclusion folders, so I'm well pleased with that.

And I've been going through removing a bunch of my "conditional grouping" environments as they were getting out of date anyway (where I keep adding more addons to a regions, for instance), plus I had a few things that obviously had gotten interlinked so I kept finding stuff being activated that I wasn't expecting.

So I shall slowly go through tidying things up and attempting to simplify my setup. I suspect I'll probably just stick a bunch of things I've currently set as conditional just as permanently on in my general "global" category and have manually selected groups, maybe via the presets (which I haven't done much with, just some basic "all off, "standard plus libs" etc things) for things like my UK or US POI sets.

All is good!

Thank you,

Andy