Updates curiosity

[rickk]

Decided to do some housekeeping in my Windows 7-64 Gimp install  today.  First off I was determined to correct the extreme long launch time of Gimp 2.10.14.  Noticed that I had 176 MB of extra brushes and 460 MB of extra patterns installed.  Cleared out all but the basics and a few custom favorites, and that completely fixed the launch time problem.

This was originally a Gimp 2.8.x install that I updated to 2.10.14 a year or so ago. And when I did the update at that time, the install process found and auto-migrated all those brushes, patterns, plugins, etc etc to the new 2.10.14 install....AND PUT A MYSTERY DIRECTORY in my start  menu labeled .gimp2.8    that I had pretty much neglected ever since.

For reasons explained in the following, I now want to delete all traces of the old gimp 2.8.x install...if I can do that without causing problems I'm too ignorant to know to expect. Can I safely delete those? Or are there hidden dependencies lurking beneath the surface?

To my uninformed eyes, it appears that everything crucial to Gimp 2.10.14 was migrated into the new directories created when the upgrade was performed, and I am no longer using Gimp 2.8.x. So, will I cripple anything by removing the old brushes, patterns, gradients,plugins, etc directories that are present in this .gimp2.8 menu?

The reason why it's important to me is that today I also decided to install  Partha's Portable Gimp 2.10.22 onto a flash drive, and during that install, the install process  "found" all those old 2.8.x  files and migrated them into the portable USB system....meaning I had to go through the portable install and repeat the pruning process I had just done on my console

It was truly a "oh god, where did all this junk come from AGAIN? moment...that I'd just as soon try to do away with completely, if possible. 

I was surprised that the "Portable" install found my old 2.8.x resources that had been neglected for some time and annexed those instead of the  freshly pruned 2.10.14 currently in use.

Even more of a surprise, while I was at it I decided to update the 2.10.14 install,....and found that 2.10.30 is now available, and went with that.

And was relieved to see that the 2.10.30 update found and used the resources from the 2.10.14 install, and not the older 2.8.x install .

So, is there any purpose to those legacy resources that I'll miss if I delete them?

[Ofnuts]

Check if by any chance the 2.8 folder (and its children) appear in any of the Preferences/Folders in your 2.10.

Also: http://gimp-tools.sourceforge.net/managementtools.shtml

[rickk]

Thanks!!

(looks like a good thing I asked first, and didn't just start deleting)

[rickk]

Well, that proved interesting. After verifying no folder dependencies inthe preferences of the resident Gimp install, I deleted the entire .gimp-2.8 folder,.....and the resident gimp 2.10.30 continues to work just fine.

Additionally, the Partha Portable gimp I had installed on a flash drive that used the configuration info from the 2.8 folder, had produced a series of 6 error messages each time I started it. Not so severe that gimp refused to start, I just had to acknowledge each error on the way to launching the portable version. Problems such as nufraw-gimp and webexport being unable to start, and procedure browser, print, photocopy, and pagecurl plugins being non-compatible....

So, it occurred to me that those problems could very well be from that old legacy folder with it's obsolete configuration files, etc. so I did a completely new install of the Portable gimp,..and all of those error messages went away.

Runs like a charm now. Thanks again for your guidance.

It was interesting that during the re-install,... with no legacy .gimp2.8 folder to draw upon, the install process DID NOT seek out alternate configuration from inside the resident 2.10.30 AppData\Roaming\GIMP\2.10\... folder, (which I expected) but instead just doing a rudimentary, default install with minimal brushes, patterns, gradients and such. And upon first launch took forever as it queried default folders for resources. But, after that first time, it now runs very well.

[rickk]

Based upon recent reading, it appears as though I might be in for a surprise whenever I use this portable version on a foreign PC. It'll be interesting to see what comes of that.

Also interesting to see files that I edited a week ago on the application that has been resident on the machine, listed in the "Recently Used" menu of the portable version that I created new from download just last night. So, obviously even though the fresh "portable" install did not acquire any of the brushes, patterns, etc from the resident application, it still did "raid the barn" at least to some extent.

[Ofnuts]

(12-23-2021, 06:05 PM)rickk Wrote: Based upon recent reading, it appears as though I might be in for a surprise whenever I use  this portable version on a foreign PC. It'll be interesting to see what comes of that.

Also interesting to see files that I edited a week ago on the application that has been resident on the machine, listed in the "Recently Used" menu of the portable version that I created new from download just last night.  So, obviously even though the fresh "portable" install did not acquire any of the brushes, patterns, etc from the resident application, it still did "raid the barn" at least to some extent.

The "recently used" list is possibly shared between apps. At least it is on Linux. Unless you mean File ➤ Open recent?

[rickk]

Well, no not exactly. But I suspect we are talking about the same thing. In order to verify that some of the plugins worked, I had to load an image ....and went to "File > Open" and that produced the "open  image" dialog, with the sub heading "Recently Used", and in the file list were 4 files I had edited a week before even downloading the portable application.

So, in conjunction with being a little unnerved by my recent experience where the creation of the portable version "salvaged" that ton of old brushes and patterns from the  .gimp2.8  legacy folder, I was probably in hyper-sensitivity mode and similarly noticed those files in the open image dialog as being "disturbingly legacy" as well.

Your explanation makes sense, so until I have a chance to try the portable version on some foreign machine, I'll take your word for it.  


Additionally of interest to me, on the portable gimp, Edit Preferences>Folders> (brushes, patterns, etc) specifications, I see that G: is specified as the source drive. And the flash drive in use was in fact G: when the portable version was created. I didn't make the G: specification, that  was specified as a "default" by the install process.

But I'm wondering how that's going to work out when I take that flash drive to some other machine where it will clearly NOT be G: ?   My local library is closed until Monday, so I'll just have to wait, in order to verify.

Seems like I vaguely remember there being a wildcard, or an environment variable you could specify in such instances that told your program "in the same directory you are installed in", but it's been so long I can't recall with certainty. Seems as though something like that would be better than a hard specification....

[Ofnuts]

I believe the launcher of the Portable version sets up everything right each time (it know the drive it has been launched from). Actually in the gimprc file, the standard brushes/patterns/ e ct directories are specified like this:

Code:

(brush-path "${gimp_dir}/brushes:${gimp_data_dir}/brushes:/home/me/MoreGimpStuff/Brushes")

In other words, they are specified using variables (${gimp_dir} and ${gimp_data_dir}) that are set by Gimp when it starts...

So, plugin it in any PC and expect miracles.

[rickk]

(12-24-2021, 05:29 PM)Ofnuts Wrote: So, plugin it in any PC and expect miracles.

Well, that sounds better than my wildest fears, so I look forward to a happy outcome.

Thanks again.

[rickk]

On a positive side note, it was totally painless updating gimp 2.10.14 to 2.10.30, as well as updating gmic to version 3.0
Nary a problem.

And the gimp 2.10.30 install tapped my pre-pruned brush and pattern assortment from the working 2.10.14 system and not the .gimp-2.8 legacy folder. That was a definite plus.

Hard to remember, but I think that old 2.8.x gimp might have been a Partha...so perhaps that is why the Partha Portable install tapped the .gimp-2.8 legacy folder.....(instead of the then current working system)