Board manager zip files bloat

Development Tools IDE 2.x
1

I have 4.5 GB of board manager zip files (68 files in total) in the folder:
C:\Users*MyUserName*\AppData\Local\Arduino15\staging\packages
Many of these appear to be all of the different (and old) versions for a particular board that I have installed in the past and subsequently updated several times when updates have become available.

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I have only ever used Board Manager to install new boards, never having done it by downloading individual zip files. I'm using Arduino IDE 2.4.3.

Can anyone tell me why all these zip files are being saved on my computer and are not being deleted, especially when a new updated version for a particular board has been installed? Can I safely delete all these zip files?

Thanks.

2

I have removed them, and no issues have occurred.

3

I confirm that you can safely delete them.

They are helpful in the case where you remove and then reinstall a boards platform, since Arduino IDE will be able to quickly install it from the staged ZIP file instead of having to do a long download from the Internet. However, that is a rare use case so it is reasonable to remove these files unless you anticipate them being useful (as might be the case for someone who does a significant amount of work supporting Arduino users, or beta testing).

Arduino IDE 2.x - needs to do disk cleanup
4

Many thanks. I have now deleted them.

5

You are welcome. I'm glad if I was able to be of assistance.

Regards, Per

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6

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