I'm running v1.8.8 as Portable. The other day I used the serial monitor for the first time, and ended up with the subject file in its own folder named .jssc under Owner. I assume those events are related. But I see that the file is also located in C:\arduino-1.8.8\lib. Is there a way to get the IDE to just look for the file in the lib folder so I can delete it and its folder from my User folder?
That does seem a bit strange. I can also reproduce this behavior and they are indeed related. It happens whether the IDE is in portable or regular mode and it still occurs when using the hourly or beta builds of the IDE.
Just so I can understand the situation better: does this behavior cause a problem for you? If so, what exactly is the problem it causes?
It doesn't cause a problem running the IDE. It's just that it further extends the vertical spread of the Windows Explorer folder tree, and increases the vertical scroll burden. If every program insisted on having its own folder at this level, things would get out of hand quickly. It seems clear that this dll doesn't need its folder to be visible to me, and in fact it doesn't really need its own folder at all since a copy of it is found in the \lib folder. So I guess I would consider this to be bad behavior unless it needs to be this way for some reason. If I set the Hidden attribute on the folder, do you think the serial monitor would still work ok?
ShermanP:
It doesn't cause a problem running the IDE. It's just that it further extends the vertical spread of the Windows Explorer folder tree, and increases the vertical scroll burden. If every program insisted on having its own folder at this level, things would get out of hand quickly.
Thanks for the explanation.
ShermanP:
in fact it doesn't really need its own folder at all since a copy of it is found in the \lib folder.
I would think so to, but I have no knowledge about this subject. If you want, you can open a bug report to request that the version of the file bundled with the Arduino IDE installation be used instead of installing it to the user folder. This will bring the issue to the attention of the Arduino developers.
Although I didn't find an existing issue about this under Windows, I did find one about the issue under Linux:
The interesting thing is the commit linked from seems to indicate that Arduino fixed this behavior so the .jssc folder would not be created two years ago. And in fact when I use Arduino IDE 1.8.3 (the next IDE release after that commit was made) the .jssc folder is not created. The regression occurs starting with Arduino IDE 1.8.7. I see that the JSSC version was updated to jssc-2.8.0-arduino2 from jssc-2.8.0-arduino1 in that IDE release so I suspect there was some change in Arduino's JSSC between those versions.
I think the Arduino developers would be interested in investigating this because the change to avoid the creation of the folder was done for the purpose of "future Windows compatibility".
ShermanP:
If I set the Hidden attribute on the folder, do you think the serial monitor would still work ok?
Yes.
I've posted a new issue on this in Arduino/arduino. But I will also try hiding the folder. From what I read here, I may want to stick with v1.8.8, so hiding it may be the best option for me.
Thanks ShermanP. For any interested parties, here is the issue report: