Author Topic: TD Startup Reinstalling Files?  (Read 1787 times)

mrticsay

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TD Startup Reinstalling Files?
« on: March 28, 2009, 12:29:16 PM »
Corey,

On startup, is TD now reinstalling some files.  What I've specifically noted is files in the templates directory like RaceTrack*.xml, RoundEight*.xml, sample*.*, etc. etc.

Since I've got all my own custom files that I use, after each upgrade I would run a script to save off these files to another directory.  This allowed me to keep them for reference or future use, but cleaned up the directories for any time I was trying to lookup/open a file.

Its not a big deal if it is doing this as I'll come up with a new scheme for managing the installed files (or my personal files), but wanted to see if I understood what is happening now.

Thanks,
Michael

Corey Cooper

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Re: TD Startup Reinstalling Files?
« Reply #1 on: March 29, 2009, 03:06:25 PM »
Yes, it does this.

When you update the software, all files included with the software (the sample tournament, template files, etc) will be written to the install folder, overwriting the ones that are already there.  If you choose to save over these files, you're going to lose your changes when you update the software.  This has been noted on the Download page (http://www.thetournamentdirector.net/download.html) since 2.0 was made available, or perhaps since the first update to 2.0 became available.  So, you should really save your own versions with their own unique name, to ensure you don't lose your customizations when you update the software.

Now that the TD uses Data Stores, updating the software will only update the files in the TD's install folder.  This doesn't do most people any good, as it is at least recommended that you don't use the install folder as your data store.  So each time you start up the software, the TD copies included files to the current data store (basically, it "inits" the current data store).  This is the only way for updated included files to find their way to the data store folder for people to use.

Take a look at the "dataStore.txt" in the lib folder of the TD install folder.  This file is the manifest of files that are copied during the data store init process.  Changing it will affect what is copied during a data store init.  So, you could either remove the files you don't want copied from that list, or create a script to delete the files each time.  Of course, an update to the software will replace the dataStore.txt file.

mrticsay

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Re: TD Startup Reinstalling Files?
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2009, 07:39:15 PM »
Corey,

I'm not editing any of the install files (therefore not worried about overwrites).  What I've been doing is after the intall I would run a script to move out files I knew I didn't use just to make my directories cleaner.  It may just be that I had never noticed before now that they were reinstalled on startup.

Thanks for the clarification and the hint on the dataStore.txt file.  I'll figure out my next steps.

Thanks again!
Michael