Arduino IDE - Zillion libraries

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

This is something that has left me bewildered - when Arduino is installed it creates so many libraries folders. Not sure why .

I know some of them are native to the IDE but even some of them are duplicated. Would be a happy situation if the IDE can just have one folder called Library that contains the native ones and also the ones that I add.
Just see the number of libraries that my PC has. ( Some of them are installed by third party software- like Meguno Link - that's fine )

Is it OK that I delete all other libraries except the one that is pointed to by the Sketch book in preferences ?
With so many being there keeping track of latest ones is a nightmare.

Can someone help on this ... the last but one c:\users\hp\documents\arduino is the one I created and has all my libraries.Rest can be deleted ?

Capture.PNG
Capture.PNG890×348 9.99 KB

Capture.PNG
Capture.PNG890×348 9.99 KB

2

You probably will have to keep the first one (Arduino\Hardware\arduino\avr). Although, you did a boards package update, so it might not be necessary.

Codeblocks is your own doing :wink: Same for MegunoLink.
The desktop is probably your own doing as well

AppData partially contains things from board packages (that you installed or updated). AppData\Local\Temp can be removed.

No idea about users\public or AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows; might be that you're using the Windows Store version instead of a normal IDE.

If you make a backup of the library directories in your image, you can always restore them if you remove the wrong ones.

3

You're going to have big problems if you delete libraries from C:\Users\HP\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages. These libraries are only accessible while you're compiling for the board of that specific platform, so you'll only ever have one of those libraries folders active at a time.

C:\Users\HP\AppData\Local\Arduino15\cache\downloads.arduino.cc/libraries contains the index file for Library Manager. This is completely different from the libraries folders that contain Arduino libraries. Just because a folder is named "libraries", doesn't mean it's the same thing as C:\Users\HP\Documents\Arduino\libraries.

C:\Users\HP\AppData\Local\Arduino15\staging\libraries contains the .zip files of the libraries downloaded from the Internet when you do an installation via Library Manager. Again, this is completely different from C:\Users\HP\Documents\Arduino\libraries.

I think you're really getting too obsessed with this thing. These folders only use a few megabytes of storage on your computer. I do recommend cleaning up things like C:\Users\HP\Desktop\libraries that you created yourself in order to keep your file system organized, but as for the internal folders of the Arduino IDE, just leave them alone. Each was created for a specific reason.

4

Thanks Pert !

Yes the right word was obsessed !! HDD storage was never an issue as I have some 550 Gb still lying unused.

One of the reason for this investigation was the Teensyduino. Yes as many would agree, the moment you install this then there are multiple libraries ... particularly the Wire.h and SPI.h are typical issue areas where a code compiles for AVR but not for the Teensy. There was a time I even tried absolute paths to libraries to see if that helped ( it did not help as expected ). Most of the times Arduino chooses the right library but only when there is a deadline to compile, it does not.

Anyway just yesterday I read a post in Teensy forum and based on that created a Portable installation of Arduino and added Teensyduino to it.

Now peace prevails and there is no poaching of libraries between the AVR and ARM families.

So as you advised I will not touch any of the libraries ... is that's what make Arduino happy so be it .