I need to look at a forked version of a vendor's library. The Adafruit .mp3 player. But the Arduino IDE seems to be designed to upgrade upgrade upgrade. And it looks like I have at least three "current" versions of the bloody thing. Adafruit's list of versions, Teensy's custom version, I have a version that is in my libraries folder that used to be the one I used. But no longer seems to make the cut somehow. And, I need to bring in this new one to have a look at..
How the Hel...
Is there any way to see what's in there now? And possibly dump them? And, somehow stop this thing from happily going out and gorging itself on more when I'm not looking?
You could rename them (and rename the header in the .h file) and make sure that anything that depends on it selects the proper file. It might anyway be worth having a look on the inside to see what is the difference between them.
jimLee:
Is there any way to see what's in there now?
I don't understand what you're asking here. Please provide some more details.
jimLee:
And possibly dump them?
There is no way to delete a library via the Arduino IDE. This is by design since they don't want to risk people inadvertently deleting irreplaceable custom libraries. However, you can simply delete them from your hard drive just as you would any other folder.
jimLee:
And, somehow stop this thing from happily going out and gorging itself on more when I'm not looking?
The Arduino IDE does not automatically install libraries. There are some libraries that come with the IDE. There are also some libraries bundled with hardware packages (which are only accessible when compiling for a board of that package. There are also a bunch of libraries that are optionally installed with Teensyduino.
pert:
There is no way to delete a library via the Arduino IDE.
It's good to hear that as a fact. I searched and searched for a "delete library" in the IDE the other day, when I wasn't sure I had the good version of RF24. I did eventually just delete it from Windows.
This seems like the usual situation where providing a "Black Box" (Library Manager in this case) seems like a great idea until it isn't.
IMHO if the developers of the Library Manager had put the equivalent amount of time into writing clear instructions about how to install a library manually it would have been more useful. It's not as if it is difficult to install a library manually.
It would be a nice feature for Library Manager to be able to uninstall in addition to install and update. There was some recent discussion of how this could be done safely but it's kind of complex so I don't know if it will ever happen. The root of the problem is that Arduino decided to make Library Manager install to the sketchbook folder, which I think was a bad idea. That folder should be left exclusively for the user's files. If Library Manager used a separate libraries folder, then there would be no concern that it might delete the wrong thing. In fact, it already does some weird stuff to avoid overwriting custom libraries during installations so they didn't completely avoid the risk even without the uninstall feature.
Robin2:
It's not as if it is difficult to install a library manually.
Unfortunately, some people find it extremely difficult even with very clear and detailed step by step instructions. I think the younger people just don't have any understanding of the basics of working with file systems.
For me, the best benefit of Library Manager is update notifications. It is also very convenient for automated library installation via the CLI. Sure, you can do that without Library Manager, but not nearly so easily.
Confronted yesterday after upgrading the IDE with the boards manager i installed ESP8266 v2.5 beta afterwhich i encountered some errors, turned out i could install a different version thereafter. after updating the IDE i did of course have to manually re-install any libraries that i didn't install using the library manager. I tend to blame all these things on Java (what is used to write the IDE) Interpreters have disadvantages, Compilers have disadvantages, and Java is both !
Deva_Rishi:
i did of course have to manually re-install any libraries that i didn't install using the library manager.
That is why you should never install anything to the Arduino IDE installation folder. If you install libraries to the libraries subfolder of your sketchbook folder, they'll persist through IDE updates.
pert:
That is why you should never install anything to the Arduino IDE installation folder. If you install libraries to the libraries subfolder of your sketchbook folder, they'll persist through IDE updates.
On windows machine moving those things into the proper spot is something of a happening anyway. I saw it coming (and the installer does warn you) and backed up up what i needed to.
pert:
I think the younger people just don't have any understanding of the basics of working with file systems.
A grand opportunity to force them to do a bit o' learnin'
Elsewhere on the Forum there have been several discussions about how to get people to read the Forum instructions and how to weed out time wasters. Having to learn about a file system would be a good hurdle to sort the men from the boys
The programming equivalent of learning Shakespeare
Floppies!? Give a line of 8 toggle switches! That way I KNOW my bits are set or not!
Anyway..
That is why you should never install anything to the Arduino IDE installation folder. If you install libraries to the libraries subfolder of your sketchbook folder, they'll persist through IDE updates.
Herein lies the problem, double so on Macs. We of the enlightened computer choice can only "see" our own libraries folder. Everything else is hidden under a nice Arduino application icon. The first we find out about them is the mass quantity of compiler warnings about duplicate files.
The sad thing is, the libraries that we can "see" seem to be the lowest on the priority list when choosing between duplicates. So here we are in he position where, when debugging, we can't figure out why something is doing weirs stuff because the code we're looking at isn't the code it used to make our program.
And I know how fussy people get when someone posts code they are not actually trying to run.
IF the library folder in the sketch book folder was top priority, we could at least have the option of overriding the auto library choices. As it sits it just makes the confusion worse.
IF the library folder in the sketch book folder was top priority, we could at least have the option of overriding the auto library choices. As it sits it just makes the confusion worse.It is of course right next to the actual sketch folder, which does have top priority, so just a copy-paste away, but that does cause many duplicate files etc.
Some people really thought about it but unfortunately did not want it set up the same way as you.
