Plugins Folder Cleanup

Steven Haymes · Jul 10, 2019, 1:42 AM

To All,

There as been discussion on the changes in the directory structure for plugins with change in Plugins -> Plugins Admin… after NP++ 7.6.x resulting in some of us reinstalling plugins which in turn has resulted in duplicate plugin files and a bit of a mess.

I would like to clean up this mess on a few of my computers, so my questions are:

list item Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins I have a bunch of DLL’s that are duplicated under the new folders with the same name. For example file ComparePlugin.dll and folder ComparePlugin. Can I remove the old DLL’s under Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins?
list item Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins are there any plugins that must remain there under the new directory structure for plugins? I assume PluginManager.dll must remain.
list item Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins are there any folder that are no longer necessary? For example doc and disabled.
list item Under C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\plugins\config are there any files that can be removed? These are mainly INI files and a few other files for specific plugins.

Thank you,

Steve

PeterJones · Jul 10, 2019, 4:10 PM

@Steven-Haymes, Welcome to the Notepad++ Community.

You asked these items:

Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins I have a bunch of DLL’s that are duplicated under the new folders with the same name. For example file ComparePlugin.dll and folder ComparePlugin. Can I remove the old DLL’s under Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins?

Yes, plugins\blah.dll can be safely deleted (after you’ve installed the plugin in the right location, too), because under 7.6.3 and newer, it has to be under plugins\blah\blah.dll

Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins are there any plugins that must remain there under the new directory structure for plugins? I assume PluginManager.dll must remain.

No, under 7.6.3 and newer, all plugins must be in subdirectory named the same as the plugin’s dll.

Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\plugins are there any folder that are no longer necessary? For example doc and disabled.

Neither are necessary. However, some plugins are still looking for their help documentation in plugins\doc\pluginname rather than plugins\pluginname\doc, so the plugin’s builtin help might not work right.

And plugins\disabled was only created because the Notepad++ installer (at some point in your history of installs) decided that one of your plugins was considered “unstable” and “helpfully” uninstalled it for you by moving it to the disabled subfolder, which made it not be recognized. There’s no good reason to keep the disabled subfolder – though you may have a good reason for not considering those plugins “unstable”, and thus moving any found as plugins\disabled\blah.dll to plugins\blah\blah.dll

Under C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\plugins\config are there any files that can be removed? These are mainly INI files and a few other files for specific plugins.

The %AppData%\Notepad++\plugins\config directory and it’s hierarchy is where plugins are supposed to store their configuration files; the structure under config is not required to follow the plugin-install-directory hierarchy requirements, so they may be directly in the config folder, or they may be in whatever subdirectory thereof that the plugin wants – whether or not it matches the blah from blah.dll. I wouldn’t delete any of those for any plugins that you want to keep the same settings. If you do delete there, you will lose settings, and the plugin might or might not recreate the config file for you. That’s on a per-plugin basis.

Steven Haymes · Jul 11, 2019, 1:58 AM

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your response.

I ended up on using the “clean slate” solution that involved uninstalling NP++, cleaning up the remaining folders and then reinstalled the latest version of NP++. Before that, I backed up my C:\Users\User_Name\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++ folder to retain my old settings.

After installing the few plugins that I use, I copied the backed up plugin configurations files (CustomizeToolbar.btn, CustomizeToolbar.dat, npes_saved.txt, NppExec.ini and such) over the new ones (which were backed up first). DSpellCheck required downloading a dictionary.

I copied my backed up custom color theme into the new themes folder and just manually went through my preferences as they are simple on NP++. All in all, it was not that painful of a process and now I have a clean NP++ install on my computers.

Regards,

Steve