Cant load plugins all of a sudden

[dunbarx]

This just happened, again. Mac OS 10.15.7

I have my favorite gadget stack in ".../Documents/My LiveCode/Plugins".

In a new session, the plugin will not load. I have to open it by hand and place it in use. This actually happened a few times in the past. Not sure how I fixed those.

Craig

[mwieder]

Craig-

Look at your preferences. My guess is that it's not pointing where you think it is any more.
As to why, I dunno. But maybe explicitly set it to point to Documents and see if that fixes it.

[stam]

Sometimes I find I have to put adding into a folder called “extensions” and sometimes a folder called “plugins” both in the same directory, no matter which is linked in the prefs.

If you’ve confirmed your prefs for the directory is set, it might be with trying folders with alternate naming…

[mwieder]

The preferences should actually (and this is annoyingly not well documented) point to the directory that encloses both the extensions and plugins folders. So if you have

My LiveCode
Extensions
Plugins

you should point the preferences entry to "My LiveCode".

[FourthWorld]

If it turns out to be Prefs, please file a bug report.

Somehow the prefs subsystem became brittle several versions back, and given its role in so many things it's become a common source of IDE failure.

But it's just Prefs, not some exotic technology. It shouldn't be such a pervasive cause of bad experiences.

I imagine the issue has stuck around as long as it has because recipes have been few. Adding one more case may help, if of course we find that's what happened here.

[mwieder]

What would be really useful is if someone could save a copy of the bad preferences file instead of just deleting it, and then attach that to the bug report. I swear I'll do that if my preferences file gets corrupted again, but it hasn't happened in quite a while now.

[dunbarx]

Thanks for all the replies.

OK.

It seems that I had another folder named "My LiveCode Stacks" buried several folders deep in the "Documents" folder. Even though I explicitly selected the "My LiveCode Stacks" one level down within "Documents" in the "Files and Memory" preferences, when I renamed that lower level folder, all turned out well.

Why did it change? Hahaha..

Why does another folder of the same name somewhere else, and nowhere near the pathname chosen in the preferences matter? Mmmmph, AHAHAHA.

Craig